Electoral bonds can be tracked.
| | On Monday, HuffPost India launched #PaisaPolitics, an exclusive investigation by senior journalist Nitin Sethi on how the Narendra Modi government pushed through electoral bonds—an opaque instrument to channel money to political parties—against the advice of institutions such as the Reserve Bank of India and the Election Commission, and sometimes, by breaking its own rules.
The Congress raised the issue in Parliament today, and the Rajya Sabha was adjourned after House chairman Venkaiah Naidu said it couldn’t be taken up for discussion. Even when the session was reconvened, some MPs continued to protest, and Rajya Sabha TV was blacked out for a few minutes.
But we’re far from done yet.
In part 4 of #PaisaPolitics, Sethi proved, once and for all, that the Modi govt has repeatedly lied about buyers of electoral bonds being completely anonymous. |
|
|
|
|
|
| | | Tell me more about this
The most memorable of these lies was told last year, after Poonam Agarwal ofThe Quint reported that the bonds have a secret alphanumeric code that was visible under UV light. The finance ministry issued a press release, where it said “the number is not being used nor can be used to track the donation or the buyer”. But documents accessed through RTI by transparency activist Lokesh Batra has revealed that that SBI can not only keep track of who bought how many bonds, it also knows which political party the bonds went to.What’s more, apart from SBI officials, law enforcement agencies such as the CBI and the ED can also ask for this information if needed (just leaving this here: A "caged parrot" — Supreme Court describes CBI.)
Sethi’s story conclusively proves that the only people who don’t know the identity of electoral bond buyers and receivers are the opposition parties and the Indian public.
And that's not all. Documents show that the finance ministry keeps a close eye on the working of the electoral bond scheme—this means SBI will not respond to RTI queries on the issue without the government's approval, though it has no need to do that. The bank also put up just a token protest and then fell in line when the govt wanted to break the rules by extending a special window for the sale of bonds in the run-up to the general election (it finally decided against it after an SC directive).
What next?
We have more revelations lined up. Look out for Part 5 of #PaisaPolitics on https://www.huffingtonpost.in/ tomorrow. |
|
|
|
|
|
| | | | | | | | | | | New to this email? You can sign up here.
You can also follow HuffPost India on Flipboard.
©2019 HuffPost lndia | Level 3B, DLF Centre, Sansad Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi - 110001, India You are recieving this email becuase you signed up for updates from HuffPost India.
Feedback | Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
0 comments:
Post a Comment