How big is the Electoral Bonds Scam?

Electoral Bonds have enabled corruption, crony capitalism and fraud at multiple levels. It has spread like cancer.

This thread will show you how far this cancer has spread 🧵

ENABLED EXTORTION

21 companies bought electoral bonds after raids by central agencies.

It's worth asking why companies that are being investigated for money laundering and corruption are allowed to donate to political parties at all.

Ex: Future Gaming - A company run by Santiago Martin, a person who is being investigated by agencies since 2007. He has THIRTY CBI cases against him. This company has donated Rs 1,368 crore to multiple parties.

HOW? Why was this allowed? Why was this kept hidden?
scroll.in/article/106526…

LOSS MAKING COMPANIES MADE DONATIONS

33 loss-making firms donated electoral bonds worth ₹582 crore. At least 45 companies that donated electoral bonds to the ruling BJP have suspect funding sources.

How is it that a company that is not making any profit is able to donate crores to a political party?

Ex1: Bharti Airtel, made a loss of 76,000 crore in the last 5 years. They donated 198 crore through electoral bonds.

How is it that companies are able to donate more money to political parties than their actual profits?

Ex2: Qwik Supply Chain, made a profit of 144 crore in 5 years. But ended up donating 410 crore via electoral bonds.

thehindu.com/data/thirty-th…

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meghnad (Nerds ka Parivaar)

@Memeghnad

Jan 30

in case you missed what was happening in that #ChandigarhMayorElection video, here's a thread breaking it down frame by frame.

🧵thread

Presiding Officer (PO) gets up from chair after "invalidating" with the opposition votes.

you can see the BJP Mayor candidate being rushed in.

BJP candidate is shoved into the chair and BJP starts celebrating.

PO watches on as people protest on the right side.

Read 12 tweets

meghnad (Nerds ka Parivaar)

@Memeghnad

Jan 13

I've been on a journey to document what modi government has done in the last decade.

a thread 👇

why modi is everything everywhere all at once

how modi's 'brand' and its attributes are an absolute trainwreck for governing the country

what is vishwaguru making

10 years of "make in india" and why nobody is talking about it anymore

Read 6 tweets

meghnad (Nerds ka Parivaar)

@Memeghnad

Dec 8, 2023

was going through the ethics committee report on Mahua Moitra's expulsion and found that stuff like THIS is being used as "evidence".

See no. 6. It's a question about allowing free and efficient trade between India & Bangladesh.

The reason given is Hiranandani has invested in Bangladesh so he wants free movement. 🤯

This evidence was given by Jai Anant Dehadrai to the committee and there are a lot more hastily scanned instances in the report of this.

"They (Mahua Moitra & Darshan Hiranandani) would talk secretly on the phone... she would take calls on the speaker. So I would end up hearing these conversations."

ok then.

Nishikant Dubey was asked how sharing of login credentials of an MP's NIC portal to a third person amounts to compromising national security.

This was his response.

(If someone can make sense of this, please let me know because I have no idea what this means.)

Read 11 tweets

meghnad (Nerds ka Parivaar)

@Memeghnad

Oct 31, 2023

The ruling party (BJP) has received more than 5000 cr in donations through electoral bonds. The permissible limit for spending on elections in Lok Sabha is about 1 crore per candidate.

If BJP fields candidates in all constituencies, it will be max 545 crore that can be spent overall on Lok Sabha elections.

BJP has already received more than 10x of the permissible spending limit through electoral bonds in these 5 years. How is this allowed?

(I'm paraphrasing an argument made by Prashant Bhushan in SC)

The govt claimed during demonetization that they want to reduce the use of cash and turn India into a cashless society. But that doesn't seem to apply to political parties.

Parties and candidates standing for elections spend more than the permissible amount, but in cash or via proxies. The EC has admitted that it can't catch such candidates because they spend in cash.

If you want to reduce cash in politics and elections, just make a simple amendment saying 'cash spending by candidates during elections amounts to corruption'.

Instead of doing that, they have brought electoral bonds to donate to parties anonymously.

(I'm paraphrasing Prashant Bhushan's arguments in SC)

There is nothing in the Electoral Bonds scheme which says that the donation money is to be used only for election purposes. Political parties can spend their money any way they like.

Example: Party can use it to build swanky HQs, give advertisement to media houses in order to push their ideology, can be used to buy land, it can be used for anything.

The money coming through electoral bond is not tied to or restricted to only election expenses.

(I'm paraphrasing an argument made by Kapil Sibal in SC)

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