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A day after the Bengaluru police registered an FIR against Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for her alleged involvement in extortion and criminal conspiracy through the now-scrapped electoral bond scheme, the Congress on Sunday demanded Sitharaman’s resignation and a Supreme Court-monitored SIT probe into the allegations.
Apart from Sitharaman, the police also booked unnamed Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers and office-bearers of the BJP both in the state and at the national level.
Speaking at a press conference at the Congress headquarters in Delhi on Sunday, MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the “basic point is that for undermining democracy the BJP’s plans have always been sinister.”
“Everyone is equally responsible, including the finance minister. In particular, this FIR… has uncovered, unmasked, unsealed, and unveiled the true nature of the BJP and in particular its number one and two,” added Singhvi.
The senior leader also read out sections of the Supreme Court order in the electoral bonds case.
Talking about the FIR, Singhvi said “this is not an ordinary FIR” and that “it was lodged after an order by a court.”
He said that a level-playing field for an election is a must for a democracy. “This had attacked the basic structure of the Constitution… The electoral bonds scheme was an ‘extortion BJP scheme’,” said Singhvi.
“This is not just restricted to the finance minister who should resign anyway… On behalf of the party and the country, we demand her resignation. Do we not know where the buck stops on this,” he further said.
“We hope that those involved will be summoned, and their statements will be recorded. And based on that, they will be arrested. This is the criminal procedure – which is the same for all. In the last 10-12 years, it has been used against (BJP’s) political rivals,” Singhvi said.
At the press conference, Congress MP and communication-in-charge Jairam Ramesh said there were four patterns of “blatant corruption in the electoral bonds scheme that had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on February 15, 2024.”
“First is ‘chanda do, dhanda lo’ – i.e. Prepaid Bribe; second is ‘theka lo, rishvat do’ i.e. Postpaid Bribe; third is ‘hafta vasooli’ i.e. extortion/ post-raid bribe; and the fourth is ‘farzi company’ i.e. shell companies… This is the background to the FIR. For four months we have been demanding that there should be an SIT of the Supreme Court,” said Ramesh.
Ramesh also said that the finance minister should resign immediately as she is accused number one. “She should resign on moral, political, and judicial grounds… The CBI and the ED are directly linked to the finance ministry and the SBI also comes under its jurisdiction,” said Ramesh, and added that the “Congress has nothing to do with the FIR”.
The complainant in the case, Adarsh R Iyer, co-president, Janaadhikaara Sangharsha Parishath, also named Karnataka BJP president BY Vijayendra and party leader Nalin Kumar Kateel, among others.
The complaint alleged that corporates “M/s Sterlite and M/s Vedanta Company were subjected to raids by accused no.2 (ED) on multiple occasions” on account of which the firms were forced to buy electoral bonds worth Rs 230.15 crore in April 2019, August 2022, and November 2023.