Bigger Scam Than You Think (YouTube Video)

The recent revelation of the Electoral Bonds data brought forward some worrying trends – trends that indicate bribes for contracts, possible extortion through agency actions, and large-scale money laundering activity. But what makes the Bonds so sinister is that it gives the parties plausible deniability.

And looking at how BJP controls all central investigative agencies, I doubt that any investigations will take place – not against BJP, at any cost.

So the question now is – why should YOU care?

In a recent video, Nitin Gadkari proudly claimed that he had no dearth of money, and asserted that no contractor would ever accuse him of taking kickbacks.

Now, people tend to forget things rather quickly, but it is common knowledge now that Megha Engineering is BJP’s largest contributor through Electoral Bonds and they were awarded huge contracts after donating to BJP. I pointed this out in the comments of this video and some BJP bhakts jumped in to defend their favorite party.

Their argument was:

1 - Party chalan ke liye paise toh lage hain. Deshk e companies se hi liya na, China se toh nahi liya.

2 - Har party election jeetne se pehle paise baantti hai logon mein, woh paise kahin se toh aana hai.

3 - BJP ne Electoral Bonds se liya, Congress illegally chanda leti thi, ek hi baat hai.

After hearing these arguments, I realized that BJP’s propaganda machine had actually managed to downplay the electoral bonds scam. In fact, the main man himself said this recently –

"Modi ne Electoral Bonds laya toh aap dekh pa rahe hain ki kisne kisko paisa diya." (Modi's interview with Thanti TV)

Now, this is a blatant lie. Our honorable PM is lying through his teeth. The Electoral Bonds were designed to hide the money trail from the public – the only reason we now know who paid to whom is because of the Supreme Court’s judgment. In fact, his claim that there was no method to track political funding earlier is also a lie. You can watch Keshav Bedi's (PureEconomic’s) video on this topic for more details.

In this video, I will discuss with you why Electoral Bonds are by far the largest scam carried out in this country and the most audacious one too.

When we argue about BJP and Congress, we seem to forget what political parties are meant to do when in power. Look at this comment from a netizen.

“Saari partiyan paise deti hain vote ke liye, chahe who koi bhi ho…”

This guy has ignored the fact that winning elections isn’t the end of the story.

Once in power, the government has some duties. Governance, policy-making, infrastructure development, job creation, etc.

Even if we forget the Electoral Bonds for a second, and think about why any company would donate to a political party, we are faced with a hard fact – corporations donate to political parties to protect their interests. Now, imagine a couple of honest parties BLP, Longress – a corporation called Bhavani might donate to BLP, thinking their ideology would lead them to make policies that would be good for Bhavani’s business. This donation is okay. A company called LaLa might donate some money to both parties hoping to get its licenses passed easily by whichever party comes to power – this donation is also okay. Any entity donating to a party would naturally hope to reap some benefits as a result of the donation. But, the moment a party takes money and provides a contract to that company, (against public interest) it becomes a bribe, a kickback.

What does public interest mean here?

You see - these infra projects that Megha Engineering or Navyuga Engineering got after donating bonds were funded by public money. The government said that they won bids for these projects, but why did they need to pay so much money to BJP in bonds then? Anyone who has worked in purchasing for any XYZ company can tell you that it is rather easy to create a fake bidding process if you have decided to award an order to a certain vendor. Now, if a company is paying crores to the ruling party to get projects, it is safe to assume that they stand to earn a ten-fold profit over their investment – which at this point includes what they spend on the project and what they paid to get that project. The project would have cost way lesser if it had been awarded by an honest bidding process – that difference in amount – that’s the scam. The fact that if the government has awarded contracts like this, they really can’t ask for quality assurance, that is the scam. The Uttarkashi tunnel that caved in, trapping the workers inside, is a good example of this. That was Navayuga Engineering. Putting public safety at risk and getting paid for it – that’s the scam.

Bharti group donated Rs. 150 cr to BJP and the government took a U-Turn in their policy when allotting satellite spectrum in 2023 – which benefited OneWeb India which got the license & satellite authorization without an auction process; OneWeb India is a subsidiary of Eutelsat OneWeb, where the largest shareholder in Bharti Enterprises. Read the full report from Scroll.in – I have enclosed the link in the description. The funny thing is that this policy adopted by the Modi government was the same as the policy adopted by the Congress-led Govt to allot licenses in what was dubbed as the 2G Spectrum Scam. Isn’t that one of the scams that the BJP touted hard about, to come to power in 2014?

One guy argued that the Congress had been a scam party – I said, that’s why people voted them out, but now you see BJP pulling similar stunts but you’re arguing in favor of BJPs corruption.

Next up, let’s talk about the seven pharma manufacturing firms that failed drug quality tests and gave money to political parties through electoral bonds. It isn’t hard to tell that these donations were to avoid action from authorities. This is an example of the parties risking public health for money. The scam here is the crores and crores earned by these firms while making substandard drugs and selling it to the Indian public.

Another curious element of the electoral bonds saga has been the donations received by companies that was either a large part of their net profits or exceeded their profits altogether or in some cases, large donations were made by companies showing losses. Here’s a list on the screen for your reference. Now whether this was a case of money laundering or not can only be determined by investigations, which as I mentioned earlier, might not even happen.

Now, here’s a list of party-wise donations received through electoral bonds. BJP got 6060 Cr or 47%, while TMC & INC were in 2nd and 3rd position with 1610Cr (12.6%) and 1422Cr (11%) respectively. The fact that TMC and INC also received donations is being used by BJP supporters and their ministers to give BJP a clean chit.

And people who try to defend the BJP saying Congress had done so many scams – should also revisit the scams and their investigations to see if there were any convictions. The Congress was voted out for the scams that happened during their era. But now, we have people trying to defend the BJP by using this warped logic. If you are against corruption, you should be against all corruption, not just that done by Congress.

And I have become tired of this argument that BJP received a high percentage of donations because their percentage of total MPs is also nearly half – now listen to me carefully – before the introduction of Electoral Bonds, political parties had to declare any donations above 20K and there was a cap on how much a corporate entity could donate i.e. 7.5% of their net profit of last 3 years. This was a measure to control possible quid pro quo activity – like giving contracts in exchange of donations. But BJP was the party that brought in these bonds, which took off the upper limit of donations and also made the donation completely secretive – where the companies did not have to declare the donation to the tax authorities. As a result, BJP and other parties earned way more money in absolute numbers than they ever did before in history. And now we know that most of it was from corporates. This means that essentially, the corporates were controlling the people’s representatives.

A lot of BJP apologists also justify taking money from corporates saying, “Election mein kharcha toh hota hi hai…” as if that justifies compromising on public interest. The salary that these MPs and MLAs draw comes from public money – their duty is to the public first. By bringing in the Electoral Bonds, the BJP showed their love for big money, their intent for corruption, and an unscrupulous attitude towards the people of the country. How do we forget what the ministers are actually supposed to do and get caught up in their narrative or election and power?

This time, vote for CHANGE!