"Massive Corruption": Congress Says BJP's Electoral Bond Scheme Duped Maharashtrians Of Thousands Of Crores

Congress leader Pawan Khera on Friday revealed details about the BJP bringing the Electoral Bond Schemes to tunnel funds. He alleged that perhaps the biggest state that was duped by the now revoked scheme was Maharashtra. The Congress leader said all the manipulations were done by upending several established standard rules.

“This exposes massive corruption. No wonder an FIR was filed against Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and other senior BJP leaders,” the Congress leader stated.

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Describing the foul play, Khera said that Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Limited (MSRDC) opened the price bid for various highway projects in the state, such as the Virar-Alibaug Multimodal Corridor (MMC), Pune Ring Road (PRR), etc. The MSRDC, Khera alleges, then changed the pre-qualification criteria, including the rule that one bidder would get up to two packages only by defining 8 projects as tunnel projects with different qualification conditions. The change in the established rules was done to provide most of the packages to a few entities, he said.

“The MSRDC changed the pre-qualification criteria for these tunnel projects unlike its previous projects such as ‘Missing Link and Mumbai Nagpur’ where the pre-qualification criteria for tunnel diameter and length were kept at 50% for diameter and 20% for length in convergence, which is what NHAI, MoRTH, BRO, NHIDCL, and others do. MSRDC decided to keep the pre-qualification criteria for tunnel diameter at 78% of the tunnel diameter,” the statement said, adding that it was done so that other bidders could be excluded from the qualification and only three firms qualified for the requirements.

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The party also alleged that the government gave special treatment to its favored companies by removing the two-package limit. The statement also disclosed the timeline of the project. In April 2023, Request for Quote (RFQ) invited for the Pune Ring Road as a tunnel project, and in June the bid was opened against, with a total of 28 firms submitting applications. In January 2024, the bid received, with all significantly higher than the MSRDC estimates. Notably, in E1, a company’s bid was 39.88% higher than MSRDC’s estimate, while another company’s bid
was 45.72% higher. The MSRDC in April 2024 awarded contracts despite high costs, according to the Congress.

Khera further asked, “Will the Prime Minister Modi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari be made answerable “on this electoral bond scam?” noting that it duped the people of Maharashtra of thousands of crores.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court banned the electoral bond scheme introduced by the Union Government in 2018, noting that the contributions for political funding cannot be anonymous and is a violation of the constitution. The opposition parties had raised serious allegations against the scheme, stating that the government used the scheme to make companies donate for the BJP in return for the government project contracts, as well as threatening with enforcement raids.

Maharashtra is going to poll both on November 20 to elect its 288 assembly representatives. The Congress-led MVA alliance, including Sharad Pawar’s NCP and Shive Sena UBT is eyeing to wrest back the state from the BJP-backed Shiv Sena Shinde-led government.