Trading barbs at each other over the issue of electoral bonds, the Congress on Thursday called them an opaque route to make the "government corruption official" while the BJP hit back and accused it of opposing such bonds as they curb black money and brought in "honest" money in politics.
The Congress first raised the issue in Parliament where its leader Manish Tewari termed electoral bonds "opaque" because nobody knows who have bought them for which party and termed them a threat to "democracy".
The BJP fielded Union minister Piyush Goyal to defend bonds and he also termed the Congress's stand as an "alliance of the defeated and the dejected corrupt politicians" who do not want clean, tax-paid transparent money in elections.
The issue of electoral bonds has snowballed into a political flashpoint after following reports that said the RBI and Election Commission had reservations against them but we're overrule by the Modi government.
Goyal asserted that the government took almost a year to address the concerns of the RBI and the Election Commission, and expressed confidence that the EC will now be satisfied after experiencing the transparency and honest money brought in political funding by these bonds.
All the information about the electoral bonds are in public domain and can be accessed through RTI, he said, dismissing reports over the matter as "no new revelations".
The Congress earlier launched a scathing attack on the BJP-led government at the Centre, with its chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala describing it as a "modus operandi to receive thousands of crores from big business houses through secret donations".
Citing news reports based on RTI documents, Surjewala had said, "The intrigue and the conspiracy has now indicted the prime minister himself. RTI documents now establish the role and indict none less than the prime minister himself."