Electoral Bonds | The Biggest Scam in History of India? | Explained by Dhruv Rathee

Hello, friends! You have been robbed of you money. In fact, every citizen in our nation has been robbed of their money. This is probably the biggest scam in the history of independent India. You may think that I am exaggerating things, but that is not the case. The thing is that this Electoral Bond Scam is not a standalone scam, but a collection of scams. The list of scams is so long that you will be tired of counting. Not only this, it happens to be the biggest extortion racket in the country

. Let's understand what exactly happened in this video. Before starting the video, I would like to make a small announcement. We're celebrating Holi now, so on this occasion, both the courses on Dhruv Rathee Academy will be available at flat 50% off. For both the ChatGPT course and Time Management Course, use the coupon code HOLI50 You will get 50% off. But this offer is valid only till 31st March. The link to the website is in the description below. If you want to summarise this entire col

lection of scams in one line, then you can do it like this. You give me kickbacks, I will give you business opportunities, and if you don't give me kickbacks, I will trap you with ED's mechanism. I have talked about this "tenders and kickbacks" model in many of my previous videos but now we have direct evidence of it. It was in 2017 when the Modi government introduced this Electoral Bonds Scheme and made it a means of collecting kickbacks for political parties. "Finance Minister Arun Jaitley t

oday announced the contours of Electoral Bonds for funding of political parties." Every action under this scheme would be hidden from the masses. Which companies pay what amount to which parties citizens weren't permitted to know this. People who were following this news back then, had understood that this would lead to a major financial scandal. Seven years ago, I made a video on this, where I voiced my concerns. "22nd March, 2017 The day Corruption became legal in India. Companies won't need

to reveal which political parties they would be funding." We should thank the Supreme Court for declaring this scheme to be unconstitutional after 7 years. And all these scams that took place in these 7 years, are now being revealed gradually. Recently, in the India Today conclave, Home Minister Amit Shah openly lied about the Electoral Bonds. He said that total bonds sold were worth ₹200 billion, out of which BJP got only ₹60 billion. So, who got the remaining ₹140 billion? "The BJP got appr

oximately ₹60 billion through the Bonds. Total bonds sold were about ₹200 billion. So, where did the Bonds worth ₹140 billion go?" There was a TV news anchor sitting with him, who chose to remain silent. Either he forgot or he didn't have the courage to fact-check Amit Shah. As per ECI data, the total bonds issued were not worth ₹200 billion but of ₹127 billion. The ones encashed between April 2019 and January 2024. Out of this ₹120 billion, BJP received ₹60 billion. It is about 47.5%. During

the same period, the party that ranked second on the list was the Trinamool Congress which got Bonds worth ₹16 billion. It is 12.6%. Congress was at the 3rd spot with ₹14 billion, approximately 11.1% but let me just read out the rest of the list. 4th was BRS with ₹12 billion. 5th was BJD with ₹7 billion, 6th was DMK with ₹6 billion, YSR with ₹3 billion, TDP ₹2 billion, Shiv Sena with ₹1.5 billion and the other parties RJD, AAP, JDS, SKM, NCP, all of them got about ₹300 to ₹700 million. After s

eeing this list, many BJP politicians and their paid influencers make excuses that BJP is a national party, with more than 300 MPs, and numerous MLAs, and thousands of party workers, so them getting so much money should be justified. And if we calculate the ratio of money received per MP, then this ratio of BJP is lower than that of other parties. They claim that this means BJP is not as bad as other parties. *Does this make any sense?* As I told you earlier, the scam is about providing busines

s opportunities in exchange for kickbacks. Or having ED take action against them in case no kickbacks are provided. But in itself, giving or receiving political donations is not a scam. Anyone can donate to political parties. But if they are given any contract in return for their donation, if they are paid with the people's tax money, and the companies which don't give such donations, are harassed by the ED, then it becomes a scam, a fraud. Now think about it, if Vijay Mallya or Nirav Modi sa

y that because they have large companies, and employ many people, it's justified that they stole from the banks. Because on a "per employee fraud" calculation they are not significant criminals. People don't object to Vijay Mallya earning a lot of money. There's nothing wrong with earning money. The objection arises only when public fund is stolen to earn that money. Similarly, no one has a problem with why BJP accepted political donations. The problem is that to get these 'donations,' they

created a vast extortion racket, shattered the principles of democracy, and stole the nation's public funds. Amit Shah's bold-faced lie was repeated by the BJP politician R.P. Singh. "In total, there were ₹200 billion worth of Electoral Bonds. Out of this, ₹60 billion went to BJP and ₹140 billion went to the opposition." "Lie, and keep lying." And then ANI, Dainik Jagran, India Today, they published this lie without checking. Forget about catching lies, India Today's headline talked about, Amit

Shah blasting opposition. And then these entities wonder why they are called the government's puppet media. This is why. Before going into the details of the fraud, let's understand how these Electoral Bonds worked? Friends, you can basically think of an electoral bond as a coupon. The company paid the bank to buy these coupons. The coupon was then given to the political parties and the political parties could redeem the coupons. And they could access the money paid to in the bank. The rule sai

d that if any political party did not encash the electoral bond they received, if they didn't redeem the coupon, then within 15 days, the money paid to purchase the unclaimed bond would be transferred to the Prime Minister's Relief Fund. When this electoral bond scheme was launched, there was a journalist who decided to investigate this in detail. And to test this, she bought two electoral bonds. This journalist was Poonam Agarwal. She went to the SBI's Parliament Branch and on 5th April and 9

th April 2018, she bought two electoral bonds. Both were priced at ₹1,000 each. She was working for the Quint Media Organisation at that time. You can check out the video she uploaded on her channel. The buyer's name was not mentioned on the electoral bond. Neither did it mention any other detail about who bought it. Both bonds looked to be exactly the same. "There is no difference except the date. Written in red here. Here, it is written 5th April and here it is written 9th April. Apart fro

m these two things, there is no difference between the bonds." But when she sent one of the bonds for forensic testing, it was revealed that every bond has a secret Unique Alphanumeric Number. This secret number was visible only under ultraviolet light. This was shocking because this fact revealed another lie by the Modi government. The government had been claiming that anyone buying the electoral bonds, would not be identified, their identity would be hidden. No one would know who bought thi

s bond. When Miss Agarwal proved this, the Finance Ministry had to openly acknowledge that there were secret unique numbers on the bonds. But they also claimed that this number was only a security feature. And that the donations would not be tracked through this number and the identity of the buyer could not be ascertained. The then Finance Minister, the late Arun Jaitley, used this point as a defense in Parliament's Debate. He reassured the opposition parties that they don't need to worry, no

one would find out the identity of the donor, or the source of the donations. He said that their government is so benevolent that they think of even the opposition while making laws. But guess what? This was another lie spewed by the Modi government. "Lie, and keep lying." Retired Navy Officer Lokesh Batra filed an RTI and he received a file from the Finance Ministry. Some other records were reviewed by HuffPost India. In all these, the SBI explained that without recording the serial numbers, i

t will not be possible to create an audit trail. How will the bank know whether a bond has been forged or not? Someone could take a fake bond to be encashed. Then in January 2018, a notification was issued that stated in the Section 6(4) that the SBI has to provide the details of the electoral bond to any law enforcement agency if they ask for it. If SBI did not keep such details, if the donor details had to be actually masked, then how would this rule work? This meant that if ED or CBI wanted t

hey could have easily found out which company donated which Electoral Bond. Do you understand its implications, friends? As we already know, agencies like ED and CBI, have become the government's puppets. With this, three things were clear. First, the public was supposed to remain unaware of which political party receives how much political donations, which companies make political donations, and how much they pay. The citizens weren't supposed to know any information. Second, the opposition po

litical parties weren't supposed to know which companies gave donations to BJP and how much. They would have known about the donations they received. And third, the BJP government had the means to find out everything. Who is giving political donations, how much are they paying, and to which political parties. The government had access to the information about every donating company. For Modi government, it became a secret weapon against the opposition. And most of the opposition parties di

dn't know anything about it until recently. On 15th February, when the Supreme Court declared this scheme unconstitutional, it was because of a petition. A petition filed by the CPI(M) political party and NGOs Common Cause and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR). Advocate Prashant Bhushan was arguing on their behalf against this scheme. So, these are some of the organisations and people whom we should thank who led to this scam being unearthed. The Supreme Court had a lot to say about thi

s scheme, but two things were immensely significant. First, the citizens have the right to know about the quantum of the donations given to political parties and who makes these donations. This Electoral Bond Scheme went against the citizen's right to information. And second, the Supreme Court expressed its concern about how this scheme was used to get kickbacks. The court said that these contributions can be classified purely as business transactions. Companies are donating to get some benef

its in return. Based on all of all this, the Court directed SBI to release the data. *Show me your account book.* *Account for the damage you caused to the nation.* In the beginning, SBI came up with excuses about how it will take 3 months to collate the data, it can be disclosed only after the elections. But the Court refused to show any leniency and the data was released within 2 days. Eventually, this data was published on the website of the Election Commission. The data published on ECI's w

ebsite is in the form of 2 lists. The first list tells us which companies and persons bought electoral bonds, and how the value of their bonds. And the second list tells us which political parties encashed the Electoral Bonds and how much did they get. But SBI was sly and didn't reveal the secret numbers. Without them, it wasn't possible to connect the two lists exactly. Once again, they tried to hide information from the public. Once again, the Supreme Court rebuked SBI for publishing selec

tively data. It directed SBI to publish the full data by 21st March. The other political parties in the country had the list of donors who donated to them. They knew about the source of donation they received. So, 10 political parties revealed their list to the people. They revealed their data publicly, without waiting for SBI to do so. These parties included Samajwadi Party, Aam Aadmi Party, National Congress Party, JD(U), JD(S), DMK, AIADMK, JKNC, a party from Goa, MGP and SDF from Sikkim. I

would also like to mention that 4 political parties went above and beyond, who never accepted electoral bonds as a matter of principle. They are CPI, CPI-M, All-India Forward Bloc, and CPI-ML. These parties can be criticised on other issues, but their stand on this issue is commendable. The parties which accepted the Electoral Bonds their leaders claim that they accepted these bonds because they wanted to utilise the scheme that was already there. So that their donors do not have to face any p

roblems. Anyway, merely taking donations does not mean that it is a scam. "You will say that we benefited from electoral bonds too. But we are not in the position where we can award contracts, or sell public sector companies, or extort others using ED and CBI." "Bonds will be bought by rich people. Only the contractors, traders, or industrialists will be rich enough for this. They'll be the ones to buy these." So, now that you have understood the theory, now let's get to the practical. Let's

talk about the frauds. In these frauds, three entities are involved. First, the political party in power, it can be BJP's central government or any other party that forms the state government. Second, large companies which made political donations trough the electoral bond. And third, the common masses, the public. Let's put a box under them. The box under political party has the political donations. The box under the company has the company's money. And the box under the people contain public

funds. The money collected from people as taxes or otherwise. Now imagine if the government takes money from the citizens' box and puts it in the company's box. And in return, the company takes money from its box and puts it in the party's box through electoral bonds. Would you call this a scam or not? Obviously, it is a scam. In Haryana, there is a folktale of a Gyani thief who steals money from the rich and gives it to the poor. Like, Robin Hood. But scams run under the guise of electoral b

onds the poor people, the common masses were being robbed, and the money was given to the rich. Let's understand exactly how it was being done with 3 examples. First tax evasion, the companies which don't pay taxes properly. Not paying taxes means that money doesn't get to the public fund box. This means that government employees won't get their salaries on time. There won't be recruitment for government jobs, the conditions of government schools and hospitals cannot be improved. Because the

public funds that were supposed to be used for the welfare of the people aren't coming in. Now in case, a company is not paying its taxes, what should the government do? Should it raid the premises of the company? But instead of raiding, think about it, if the two make a deal. In exchange for giving political donations to their political party, the government wouldn't take action about the tax evasions. The company will be given a free pass. The government will let them continue their illega

l activities, and ED will simply remain quiet. *Try to understand the chronology.* Look at the Top 5 donor companies on the list of electoral bonds. Three of these five companies are Future Gaming, Megha Engineering, and the mining giant, Vedanta. ED and the Income Tax Department had raided all three companies. In fact, when The Quint analysed the top 30 donors it was found that 14 of the Top 30 companies were raided by the agencies. Now, one possibility is that the companies hadn't done anyth

ing wrong, the companies were working honestly. But in this possibility, the government did not care whether the company followed the law of not, and they told the companies to pay up. Basically, what the government did is called extortion. This is why Congress politician Rahul Gandhi called PM Modi, Vasuli Bhai. [Someone who runs an extortion racket.] But the second possibility could be that the company had actually committed money laundering, it was involved in illegal activities, and the gov

ernment found out about the money laundering, tax evasion, the company stealing public funds, but did not actually have an issue with it, as long as the company paid a part of the benefits to the party. Now some people may say that even if the government extorts money from such companies it doesn't actually affect us. The first problem is that government's money is the citizen's money, rules have been made on how the government should spend that money. Rule 21 of the General Financial Rules st

ates that a public officer should be as cautious while spending public money as a sane person would be while spending his own money. The government cannot award a contract for any public project to a company at will. While issuing Tender Notice, various criteria for eligibility are mentioned. The minimum level of experience of the company. The past performance of the company. Whether the company has the technical capability to properly complete the project. The state of the manufacturing faci

lities of the company. The financial position of the company. Only after evaluating all these, is a contract awarded to a company. To the candidate who can hand in the best quality of work. The candidate who will charge the appropriate price for it. They shouldn't be overcharging while the tax money is being wrongfully utilised. Now you will remember the tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand, 41 workers were trapped in it. Do you know which company was given the contract to build that tunnel? Navayug

a Engineering Company Limited. Between 2019 and 2022, this company bought electoral bonds to the tune of ₹550 million, Let me tell you another story. In December 2021, an under- construction flyover fell in Ahmedabad. This flyover was being built by the company Ranjit Buildcon. This was the third incident involving the same company. In the inquiry, it was found that this company had compromised on the quality of the concrete and construction. But did you know that this company was given multi

ple projects by Gujarat's civic bodies. Vadodara, Rajkot, Surat, Ahmedabad's Gandhinagar metro rail project were awarded to it. These were the business opportunities but where is the kickback? According to the list, between January and July 2023, this company bought electoral bonds worth ₹90 million. Let's see another example, Pune-based company BG Shirke Construction Private Limited. Between January 2023 and January 2024, it purchased electoral bonds for ₹1.18 billion. But one year before thi

s, in June 2022, an FIR was registered against this company for causing de@th by negligence. Because at the housing project construction site of this company, 4 people d!ed in an elevator crash. Before this, in October 2018, there was another incident. At the construction site of this company, 4 people lost their lives when they fell from the tower crane. You can see that a political party doesn't care about your life. As long as they get their share. *Let them shout if they want to. They'll

shout till they get tired, and then they will forget.* Look at the company Megha Engineering. Between 2019 and 2023, It bought electoral bonds to the tune of ₹9.66 billion. Such a huge amount! Almost ₹10 billion! Why would a company want to donate so much money to a political party? Three more companies were associated with this. Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited, SEPC Power, and Evey Trans Private Limited. If you add up all the electoral bonds they purchased, it is more than ₹12 b

illion. What did they get in return? In June 2019, Telangana's Chief Minister Chandrashekhar Rao inaugurated the Kaleshwaram Multipurpose Irrigation Project. In February 2024, the CAG submitted a report which revealed that initially the estimated cost of this project was ₹810 billion. But now it costs more than ₹14.7 trillion. In another report, the CAG stated that Megha Engineering was paid ₹51.80 billion in excess for four packages. It included the supply and commissioning of pumps, motors,

and equipment. CAG also stated that apart from Megha Engineering there were other contractors like L&T and Navayuga Engineering. If we look at the combined amount for all of them these contractors had received at least ₹75 billion in extended undue benefits. The report also states that the government seemed to be in a hurry to hand out these projects. 17 different projects worth ₹250 billion were awarded before receiving the detailed project report. Not only that, in October 2020, the National

Green Tribunal raised red flags about this project. The NGT said that the environmental clearance given to this project was illegal. Since this was happening in Telangana, where the BRS party is in power, so Congress and BJP both said that this Bahubali project has become a cesspool of corruption. But, here comes the plot twist. "The Zojila tunnel..." Here, BJP's Nitin Gadkari is talking about the Zojila tunnel. It connects Srinagar and Leh. "This was approved by your government. In this ten

der, the company which won the contract, 5 entities had submitted their bids, This was awarded to a company in Hyderabad, Megha Engineering." Multiple companies bid for it. But in August 2020, a small company from Hyderabad got this contract worth ₹45 billion. Which company? Megha Engineering. Look at another project. Thane-Borivali Twin Tunnel. Mumbai's MMRDA floated a tender for two packages to build this tunnel. In April 2023, Megha Engineering purchased electoral bonds worth ₹1.4 billion.

And in the next month, in May 2023, Megha Engineering was awarded this project worth ₹144 billion. This is the same company that was raided by the Income Tax Department in October 2019. But after that, the list clearly shows the billions of rupees of electoral bonds it bought between 2019 to 2024. And in this time period, one after another, projects were awarded to it. Not only by the state government of Telangana, but also by Modi's central government. In June 2023, according to this articl

e, this company was given a project worth ₹5 billion by the Defence Ministry. Friends, everything that I have told you till now, is just the tip of the iceberg. Apart from this, there is a strange case of a company named Future Gaming. A lottery company. When this company was being raided by central agencies, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was tweeting photos of her meeting with the Lottery King's son. Apart from this, there are some cases where Beef Exporting Companies bought Electoral B

onds to give donations to the parties. This case should be a wake-up call for those people who vote for this party for their religious affiliation. Then there are cases of mining giants Vedanta, EMIL, GHCL, MSPL, and how they have been accused of bending environmental rules. There is a case of Qwik Supply Chain with the same directors as in Mukesh Ambani's company, Reliance. Looking at the list, it is clear that this company bought electoral bonds worth more than its net profit. It was paying

more in political donations than it profits. But for now, I think this video is too long already. So let's talk about these cases in the next episode. If you want me to make a detailed video of each of these scams, let me know in the comments. Before I leave, I would like to mention that it's Holi, so Happy Holi to all of you! And I have a huge offer for you on Holi. Both my courses on Dhruv Rathee Academy, ChatGPT course and Time Management course, both are available at 50% off. Use coupon cod

e HOLI50 HOLI50 Those of you who haven't been able to buy these courses yet, this is a great opportunity for them. This offer will be available only till 31st March. So do check it out. Both courses are immensely useful. The ChatGPT course is in Hindi with English subtitles, but the one on Time Management is only in English. The link to the website is in the description. Or you can scan these QR codes. If you have not understood the importance of ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence in today's w

orld, then do watch this video by clicking here. Thank you very much!