Electoral bonds not a scam: Ex-finance secretary

November 29, 2019 16:44

Defending the electoral bonds scheme, former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said that it is in fact a 70 to 90 per cent cleansing of the political donation system.

"If it has replaced cash contribution to political parties, then it is a very good scheme and not a scam," he said in his first interview after retiring as Secretary at the Ministry of Power on October 31.

Garg told ANI on Thursday that the critical detail of electoral bonds on who gave which party cannot be disclosed as it is confidential and is hard-coded as the scheme's integral part. He added that the system of electoral bonds was meant to eliminate large cash donations.

In case a political party receives a political donation in cash primarily, then that might actually indicate a scam, he stated.

"It is not 100 per cent cleansing of the political donation system but it is 70 to 90 per cent cleansing of the system. Electoral bonds are not a scam," Garg said.

"How can it be a scam when the political contribution is given from the white money of a company or from somebody's bank account after transparently buying it from the bank after due KYC? Also, there is corresponding disclosure of how much amount a political party received in the form of bonds by the political party to the Election Commission," he added.

Garg was replying to a question over former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who earlier raised questions over electoral bonds and called it 'the biggest scam of the decade.'

Read: Electoral bonds: What the latest controversy is all about

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