Spokesperson: Ms. SupriyaShrinate: She said- It’s of grave national importance, 24 hours before the SBI was supposed to make names public of, who the electoral bond donors were, according to the Supreme Court order of February 15, 2024. Not unexpectedly, but, in a very shocking and brazen way,the SBI has approached the Supreme Court and has sought time until the June 30, 2024, to make these names public. Why does the SBI need so much time? SBI is not just India’s largest lender, it is a fully computerised bank, it operates 48 crore bank accounts, it operates 66 thousand ATMs, nearly 23 thousand branches, all over the country and beyond India and this SBI needs 5 months to be able to gather data for just 22,217 electoral bonds. Why is the BJP so scared of these names coming out? It’s important to remind you of two figures here.

Between 2017 and 2023, from the onset of the electoral bonds till the end of fiscal year 2023 last year, about 12,000 crore rupees was collected by political parties through electoral bonds. It wasn’t shocking, but two thirds of that went to the BJP, nearly 6,500 crore rupees. The Congress got ameasly9 per cent. It is also important to remind you here that after the Supreme Court order, a very shocking report from the News Minute, and News Laundrymade it public and this is only the tip of the iceberg that 30 companies contributed above 335 crore rupees and there were raids on these companies between 2018 and 2023 through various agencies like; the CBI, ED, and Income Tax.

23 of these companies had never donated to a political party before, the quid pro quo is for all to see. So, why is the BJP so scared? What is going to change if names become public? Let the names become public. Do people in this democracy not have a right to know that who is donating to which political party and how much and at what time? And is there a quid pro quo? Is policy formation happening on the basis of donations being received? Our agencies acting at the behest of these donations, our agency coaxing companies to donate to the BJP, our probes happening and probes closing on the basis of donations that are coming in and these are very simple questions that must be raised in any democracy. There is a clear attempt by the SBI and the Government of India at the behest of Prime Minister Modi and the BJP to conceal the names of donors through electoral bonds, but, the people of this country can see through these sinister plots and can see that every effort is being made to conceal the names of these donors and it’s for everybody to see. Everybody can just connect the dots.

And the dots when connected present an extremely worrisome picture for our democracy and that picture reveals, how there is absolute quid pro quo, as far as electoral bonds were concerned.This was a completely legalised loot that Supreme Court put an end to and may I dare say- By doing, what the SBI is attempting to do along with the BJP, and along with the Government of India,it is playing into the hands of a political party, not just ruining its own reputation, but also is in contempt of what the Supreme Court order stands for. – Tuesday, March 05, 2024.