Supreme court should form a Special Investigation Team headed by a retired Supreme court judge to probe into the corruption in Electoral Bonds – Prashant Bhushan

Supreme court should form a Special Investigation Team headed by a retired Supreme court judge to probe into the corruption in Electoral Bonds – Prashant Bhushan, Senior Lawyer Supreme Court of India
Contracts worth at least 100 times that have been given to the companies which bought those electoral bonds’
20 th April 2024
Devadas TP -Technology Media Special Correspondent. Bangalore

Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who appeared in the court on behalf of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), told in Bengaluru that a special investigation team, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, should be formed to uncover the corruption. He further added that a petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking the same.
He was speaking in a seminar jointly organised by Jagrata Karnataka, Janaadhikar Sangharsha Parishad and Bahutva Karnataka in Gandhi Bhavan. Bangalore.
When Electoral Bonds were Operationalised in 2018 , then Finance Minister Mr. Arun Jaitly told that Anonymous Electoral Bonds is to avoid Victimisation of contributors. But in reality every bind is having an alpha numeric number which enables ruling party know who contributed and to whom it is given. Same time It violated citizen rights to know who paid to which political party and it give chance to the ruling party to indulge in kickbacks bribes by doing favours and contracts and unprecedented corruption.
Prime Minister told it is to avoid cash handling , but it is a failures in that context too. he said
Ruling party being major beneficiary, of fund further It Destroyed level playing between ruling and opposition parties desired in any democratic electoral process- Prashant Bhushan said.
He accused the central government of favouring companies like Bharati Telcom and Megha Engineering after they made donations to the party through Electoral Bonds .He alleged that these donations were made as quid pro quo arrangements for favours from government.
He said Megha Engineering & Infrastructure Company was given a contract of Rs 14000 crores for a tunnel by Maharashtra Govt with in a month of they donating RS 140 crore worth Electoral Bonds to BJP.
BJP received large donations thru Electoral Bonds from Bharati Telcom at a time the company was bidding for satellite Spectrum. He alleged that the government changed the policy from Auction to nomination inorder to avaiid auction and give it to Bharati Telcom.
He also alleged import policy was changed in favour of Grasim lIndustries in return to donations to BJP.
Among all the national parties only CPIM took a principled stand and kept away from Electoral Bonds – He said
Demanding reforms in election spending, Mr. Bhushan pointed out that the election has become a money game, making it impossible for an ordinary citizen to become a candidate and contest elections.
Prashant Bhushan recommended that Electoral reforms are required to be implemented with proportional representation based on percentage of votes of every political party gets in Election , limiting Election expenditure and state electoral funding.

Anjali Bharadwaj, national coordinator NCPRI, candidly shared her views on the subject —
She said the finance ministry brought in electoral bonds completely ignoring the warnings from the RBI and ECI on black money and money laundering,”
She said we are supposed to be a democratic country but , 9 family in India control 50 % nations wealth Election after election, money spend on Horse trading for cross over to the parties Concentration of money happened meticulously .

Parties and government work for corporates Farm laws formed with corporate interest in mind .
Not enough discussion happening in parliament while passing laws.
Electoral Funding is fountain head of curruption and money laundering for contracts , policies change etc Anjali Said .
She said Companies act changed to enable contribution by shell companies which in turn generate black money .
Supreme court ruled against EBonds as EB sealed the right to knowledge and information..She added
Prior to this programme Prashant Bhushan along with Anjali Bharadwaj- National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, Adv. Harish Narasappa Bangalore SeniorAdvocate Trilochan Sastry ~`IIM Bangalore Professor Member and Trustee of the Association for Democratic Reforms delivered his speech at the National Seminar on Electoral Bonds -organised by Karnataka State SC/ ST contractors association.