Prime Minister Narendra Modi said people would regret the abolition of the electoral bond scheme, and ruled out changes in the Constitution should his govt get another term. In an interview to news agency ANI, PM said while there was scope for improvement in the electoral bonds scheme, it represented an honest attempt to improve transparency in campaign finance. “Everyone will regret it when there is honest reflection,” he said, on scrapping of the scheme as he cautioned that the country has been “pushed towards black money”.
He said the positive feature of the EB scheme was that people would have at least some idea about where parties were getting their funds from. “You are getting a trail of which company gave, how it gave, where it gave.”
He attacked the opposition for spreading “lies” about the bonds. He also scotched the charge about the Enforcement Directorate launching investigations to coerce businesspersons to make contributions to BJP, by saying that if that were the case then opposition would have got no money through bonds.
Saying he did the right things in the decade he has been in office, PM said, “yet there is so much I need to do … that is why I say this is a trailer.”
On Ram Mandir, he said that in not attending the consecration ceremony at Ayodhya in January, the current leadership of Congress had only picked up from where the first PM Jawaharlal Nehru left off when he refused to attend the ceremony to mark the restoration of Somnath Mandir which had been destroyed by invaders.
On the alleged misuse of central agencies and opposition leaders being jailed, he shot back by emphasising that it is only a handful of them who have been arrested. He also pointed out that his close colleague, Union home minister Amit Shah, was put in jail when was serving as home minister in the Modi-led Gujarat govt.
Responding to the criticism that he had personalised diplomacy, Modi said results suffer if “diplomacy is stuck in protocol… The power of diplomacy is also there in the informal.” While commenting on the role of personal relations, he emphasised the role of “his friendships” in getting the Saudi King Mohammad bin Salman and President Joe Biden together during the G20 summit in Delhi.
