Coming out heavily against the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called electoral bonds the “single biggest act of corruption done by anybody in the world.”
Speaking at a public meeting in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore, Rahul Gandhi said, “Electoral bond is the biggest scam. BJP is running a washing machine. He (PM Modi) said I am going to clean politics. Then he said he is going to bring a new scheme, electoral bond scheme, where whoever donates money will be anonymous...doesn’t matter how much money they give, nobody will know their name.”
He further said that the Supreme Court called the scheme “illegal” and asked for the release of the names of the donors.
“Then we started looking into names of donors and dates of donation...and that’s when the genius of Mr Modi became visible,” Gandhi said.
Rahul Gandhi alleged that the companies having CBI, ED or income tax enquiry, donated huge amounts to BJP and cases were closed against them, adding that it is called “extortion”.
He further alleged that the BJP offered contracts to businessmen who donated to the party. “The company has a CBI enquiry, ED enquiry, Income Tax enquiry, a few days later, they gave money to the BJP. Then, a few days after that, the case is closed and the CBI enquiry is shut down. The Indian media of course didn’t say any of this, because they are controlled by the same person, who controls the government, Mr Adani. But, this is normally called extortion.”
“A second thing that became apparent was that a contract was given to a businessman, and suddenly the businessman gave money to the BJP. The largest contracts in the country, thousands of crores, highways, mine, these businessmen were giving a cut to the BJP. This is the single biggest act of corruption done by anybody in the world and Mr Modi calls it cleaning of politics,” he added.
He further accused the BJP government of “insulting” Tamil language, history and traditions.
“The voice of the Tamil people is asking a few simple questions, it is asking Mr Modi, Mr Adani and the RSS these questions. The first question is why are you attacking our language, history and traditions?” the Wayanad MP said.
Taking a jibe at PM Modi, he said even though he likes dosa, what matters to the Tamil people is whether he likes the Tamil language, respects Tamil history and what is he doing for the state.
“You (Modi) come here and you say you like dosa, and you go back to Delhi and say one nation, one leader, one language. Why one language? Why not space for Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, or Manipuri?...at the same time, Tamil farmers are starving, Tamil youth are unemployed, and you destroyed MSMEs by carrying out demonetisation and a fraud GST,” the Congress leader said.
“Modiji, you might like dosa, and you might like vada, but that is not the issue here. Nobody cares whether you like dosa or vada; we care whether you like the Tamil language, whether you respect Tamil history, and what you are doing for the future of this country and Tamil Nadu,” he further added.
Polling for 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu is scheduled to be held in the 1st phase of the general elections on 19 April. The counting of votes is scheduled for 4 June.
In 2019, the Congress and DMK-led alliance won 38 out of 39 seats in the state, while AIADMK could only win one seat.