Meet the former engineer behind FIR against Nirmala Sitharaman: ‘Rule of law applies to everyone’
Adarsh Iyer leads a citizens’ group that has taken on the powerful in Karnataka.
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On March 30, days after the Election Commission of India lifted the veil of secrecy over the donors and beneficiaries of electoral bonds worth Rs 16,492 crore, a former software engineer-turned-activist in Bengaluru filed a complaint with the police.
In his complaint, Adarsh Iyer, 50, claimed that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, along with Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in Karnataka, Nalin Kumar Kateel and BY Vijayendra, had used investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate to extort crores of rupees for the party through the electoral bond scheme.
The BJP is the largest beneficiary of the scheme, which allowed individuals and companies to make donations to political parties anonymously. In the six years till the scheme was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, the BJP pocketed Rs 8,252 crore – more than all other 30 registered parties put together.
According to Iyer, the reason why the BJP was able to extract more donations than other parties was because it had central agencies at its disposal to threaten and extort money from businesses.
“My associates and I filed 15 complaints with the Thilaknagar police station after the electoral bonds data was declared,” Iyer told Scroll. None of them resulted in any first information reports, the police document that sets the...
