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Imprisonment of a political leader just so that BJP nails it grand in the upcoming Indian Central Government elections!!
As India’s main election nears, dramas have been unfolding. One of them being the arrest of Delhi’s Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal. The interesting case here is that even his arrest has a link with the electoral bonds which is that unconstitutional scheme that allowed only the ruling BJP party to receive crores of secret funding that was kept hidden not only from the public but also from other political parties.
It appears that BJP has framed a corruption case with the Delhi liquor scam case implicating Arvind Kejriwal, only to get him arrested.
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Arvind Kejriwal's arrest is linked to electoral bond purchases Sarath Reddy's company Aurobindo Pharma had done, pouring crores of donations to BJP.
Arvind Kejriwal is the head of National Political party, Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) and as said sitting CM of India’s capital City, New Delhi. Him put in jail at this crucial time of the main Central Government elections by the Central Government powers implies that the motive of his arrest is for BJP to get an advantage by inflicting a big setback to opposition parties.
So, Arvind Kejriwal won’t be available for election campaigning. This is important because Arvind is a popular leader in Delhi, and his party is fighting elections jointly with the main opposition Congress party in 4 States with APP being part of the INDIA Block alliance.
So, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest also weakens the strength of the main opposition Congress party as AAP is an important alliance partner of INDIA Alliance.
Modi’s BJP aims to weaken democratic processes in India by winning with an absolute majority!!
Indian Central Government elections are coming up on 19th April, and this is an important election as many say, because BJP under Narendra Modi is aiming to get more than 400 seats out of 545 seats in Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament.
The danger in this is if one party gets this sort of absolute majority, it’s the end of democracy because they will be effectively eliminating opposition and will be able to pass laws, and acts without being kept in check by other opposition party Ministers!
No sensible Indian Citizen who understands this would want this! Some BJP ministers have made headlines saying they need to win 400 seats this election as then only they can amend India’s Constitution without obstacles.
The (Not-So-)Hidden Agenda Behind BJP’s ‘400 Paar’ Slogan
So, this big setback to INDIA Alliance is also a threat to Indian Democracy because the opposition is weakened with an important political leader in bars only so that BJP gains an advantage in this election to win sort of unfairly..
Modi’s BJP has proved that it is cool with corruption with the Electoral bond scam being a mega corruption scandal!!
It’s unfair because BJP party has shown it has good tolerance for corruption which is why they introduced the electoral bond scheme which was successful in allowing them to obtain 50% of the contributed electoral funding donated secretly. This scheme made an easy way for BJP to receive secret bribes from companies to win special favors from the ruling Government dispensation.
‘Quid Pro Que’ style of corruption proliferates with Companies that donated crores of funding to BJP through Electoral bonds winning Mega Project deals, and getting policies framed to benefit them!
What’s disturbing is BJP Government exacted/ grabbed crores of funds from companies with financial or other kind of irregularities or hold records of some misconduct by blackmailing them.
More than 20 companies look to have been compelled to donate due to threats issued from Central Government Investigative Agencies - Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
I have explained about how Electoral bonds enabled curruption to flourish and open the doors for Black money flows in my earlier article.
Having a look at the numbers of the amount of money these companies raided by Govt. agencies donated, it appears BJP extorted more than 2000 crores of rupees criminal style by blackmailing these companies, their owners, directors etc.
Understanding the Delhi Excise Policy corruption case for which Delhi' CM is arrested
Kejriwal’s arrest by ED, interestingly brought to light that BJP looks to have blackmailed the director of Aurobindo Pharma, P Sarath Chandra Reddy to issue a statement against Kejriwal on basis of which Kejriwal, the current sitting CM of Delhi was charged with corruption and money laundering leading to his forcible arrest on March 21st.
Arvind Kejriwal is accused in the Delhi liquor scam case, where the accusation is that he and other top leaders of AAP received bribes from members of the South Group in return for which APP party designed the Delhi Excise Policy to benefit these South Group individuals to win licenses for establishing liquor retail outlets in Delhi.
South Group seem to be business men and political figures from Hyderabad and Andhra area.
Business Tycoon, Sarath Chandra Reddy from the South Group is the director of Aurobindo Pharma. He is one of the people accused of bribing Arvind Kejriwal in return for securing licenses to open 5 retail liquor shops in Delhi.
The Delhi Excise Policy to regulate these liquor establishments was finally removed by AAP. It was in force from November 2021 to July 2022 as the Central Government's probe agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) began accusing the policy of encouraging a lot of financial irregulates and favoring a select few liquor dealers to establish their liquor businesses.
Sarath Reddy may have been blackmailed to donate secret money to BJP and issue statement against Arvind Kejriwal
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Director of Aurobindo Pharma - Sharath Reddy
However, ED pursued this case and arrested Sarath Chandra Reddy on November 8th 2022.
Here is where this case acquires a strong link with electoral bonds…
- Sarath Reddy is arrested on November 8th 2022
- Five days later Aurobindo Pharma buys 5 crores worth of Electoral bonds and donates it to BJP
- On May 2023, ED does not oppose Sarath Reddy’s bail plea filed on the grounds of him suffering from backache, so Sarath successfully secures bail
- Then on June 2023, Sarath Reddy turns from accused to approver providing statement against Arvind Kejriwal that he bribed Kejriwal in order to obtain licenses to operate liquor establishments.
Later, on November 8th Aurobindo Pharma donates 25 crores to BJP buying electoral bonds and two subsidiary companies connected with Aurobindo Pharma, Eugia Pharma Specialities Ltd and APL Healthcare Ltd also buy electoral bonds cumulatively totalling 25 crores.
So, in total Sarath Reddy’s owned companies donate 55 crores to BJP.
In Delhi liquor policy case, approver’s firm paid Rs 30 crore to the BJP – after ED arrest
However, the point here is did Sarath Reddy accused of corruption and subsequently been put in jail been forced to donate money secretly to BJP buying electoral bonds to secure his bail and then make a statement against Kejriwal that ends up Kejriwal in jail.
There is some pattern to this, and there is enough reason to think this could be the case.
More proof available proving BJP’s involvement with the accused than with Arvind Kejriwal’s!!
Money trail of transfers between these entities owned by Sarath Reddy and BJP is there, but there is no money trail found of 100 crore of kickbacks APP party may have received by the liquor establishment dealers that secured licenses to operate in Delhi.
Arvind Kejriwal is arrested based on statements made by the accused who turned approver and possibly paid crores to BJP secretly to escape a prolonged jail sentence.
Well, ED and CBI did raid homes and establishments of APP leaders for over a year but have not found any trace of this 100 crores of money obtained through bribes. Although ED claims that money was used up by APP to fund its Goa election campaign on 2022.
My point here is not that Kejriwal is innocent, although as said there is no solid proof to say he was involved in this Delhi liquor scam. My point is that BJP is alright with corruption, extorting money and extracting other favors by threatening the corrupt!! I find this very criminal.
Arvind’s arrest diverted media attention from corruption deals facilitated through electoral bonds!
Another interesting point to note is Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest date being March 21st. Electoral bond data was released first on March 14th, where incomplete information was purposefully released by State Bank Of India(SBI), the issuer of these Electoral bonds.
Full electoral bond details that would shed light on who purchased bonds to donate to which political party was made available only on March 21st, the date Kejriwal was arrested.
This is because on March 14th, two separate lists were released by SBI, with one list providing particulars of the amount of electoral funding donated by bond purchasers(along with their name) and another list containing details of donated electoral funding that was encashed by political parties.
However, this was not linked yet, so it was a difficult task to match which bond purchaser donated to which political party. The missing link between the two was the alphanumeric code that’s printed on every bond but is visible only when exposed to UV light. Its purpose is to keep track of the flow of the electoral bond money.
So, when a political party encashes this electoral bond money, this unique alphanumeric code tracks the flow. Therefore, a record is kept by SBI of the donated electoral bond's money flow going into the accounts of the recipient political party that encashes it.
On March 21st when complete electoral bond details with the alphanumeric code was revealed, within minutes it was possible to match bond purchaser’s donation details with the political party that received it! All it needed was a few lines of code that would complete this task!
Within hours of this release of electoral bond data, Arvind Kejriwal was arrested based on statements provided by approvers, one being Sharath Reddy!
This also diverted news media from narrating news about electoral bond donations that would unravel all the corruption this opaque political funding scheme helped happen, to the breaking news of Arvind Kejriwal getting arrested on charges of corruption and money laundering.
BJP’s massive involvement with corruption through electoral bonds needs to be exposed as well!!
Again, corruption that happened through the instrument of electoral bonds has a money trail but there is no money trail evidence to prove that Arvind or his AAP party members received bribes from the South Group members.
Surely, BJP’s corruption acts by extorting money from companies similar to how they used ED and CBI to obtain electoral funding from Aurobindo Pharma should be investigated?
There is ample evidence of companies that donated secret money powered by this untransparent electoral bond scheme receiving contracts for mega projects, getting policy implementations serving their (the donor companies) interests.
What’s more there is ample evidence of electoral bonds not merely used for Quid Pro Que deals but it was used as an instrument to extort money from tainted companies that had some financial irregularities or conducted other corrupt misdeeds.
In this case, we examined that BJP under the Prime Ministership of Narendra Modi not only possibly extorted money from Aurobindo Pharma through electoral bonds, but threatened the director Sharath Reddy to issue statement against Kejriwal to have him arrested just before the main elections where Kejriwal is supposed be on the ground campaigning for elections.
Ruling Party disrupting the functioning of other political parties cripling democracy!
This is definitely unfair, unjustified and a disruption of the level playing field of opposition parties to compete in election as BJP gets a unfair advantage. I had mentioned in my earlier article about BJP managing to freeze bank accounts of Congress Party using Income Tax authorities. This was done with malafide intensions of starving Congress party of funds for functioning and conducting election campaigns.
Rahul Gandhi, the main leader of the Congress party explains how BJP manages to freeze its bank account using the IT Dept for Income Tax filing disputes that were years old (2018-2019 and 1995) involving a relatively small amount (14 lakhs), just 2 months before the elections. All this was done to cripple the Congress party so it cannot pursue the required activities to compete in the election, making it easy for BJP to win elections this way!
The problem in this is the damage inflicted on the level playing field for political parties to compete, with BJP already being super cash-rich compared with any other political party in India.
It’s already proven that BJP has procured disproportional amounts of more cash than other political parties with schemes like the controversial electoral bond scheme( through very corrupt means) but apart from that BJP is also ok playing dirty games to deprive the main opposition party Congress of its funds.
This is dangerous to India’s democracy as BJP party gets an unfair upper hand in elections.
Be a smart voter – Stand for progress, freedom and empowerment, harmony!
Last month I began writing political articles, just to highlight that the upcoming Lok Sabha Central Government elections in India is not a normal election. There are heavy doubts on the trustworthiness of the EVM machines, and the BJP party under PM Narendra Modi has misused its power over agencies be it ED, CBI or the IT department to weaken the opposition.
Elections should be fought on the basis of the good work the political parties do for the country, their measures to develop India in all its aspects – economy, healthcare, education, jobs, agriculture, schemes to uplift the weak sections of society, women empowerment, safeguarding rights of all classes of people, national security etc.
The Government should protect the rights of people to free speech, to assemble and protest peacefully placing their demands to be heard by Government. There should be independence of all our institutions from being influenced by powerful ministers – from press and media, judiciary, Election Commission and Central Government probe agencies. Law and order with harmony needs to be kept in place.
Our Indian Constitution that empowers us with these basic rights should not be changed by any political party or its supreme leader planning to obtain disproportional seats to make their own laws to govern India. This may will lead to dictatorship with all power centralised in the hands of one party controlled by its supreme leader!
Vote wisely Indians for your own good!!