Stepping up its attack on the Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government in Maharashtra ahead of the forthcoming Assembly elections, the Congress on Friday accused the ruling dispensation that it ”privileged certain companies in infra tenders in return for campaign finance donations, costing the taxpayer at least Rs 10,903 crore”.

Congress general secretary in-charge of Communications Jairam Ramesh in a post on X wrote, “The Mahayuti government in Maharashtra privileged certain companies in infra tenders in return for campaign finance donations, costing the taxpayer at least Rs 10,903 crores. Pre-paid chanda, post-paid dhandha.”

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Echoing similar sentiments, Congress’ chairman of Media and Publicity Department Pawan Khera at a press conference at the party headquarters said, “The entire nation is aware that BJP brought the Electoral Bonds Scheme to tunnel funds. We have time and again highlighted how certain firms who donated to the BJP through the illegal and unconstitutional Electoral Bonds Scheme were given huge projects in lieu of buying electoral bonds.”

“The biggest state which was duped was Maharashtra. All this was done by upending numerous established standard rules. This exposes massive corruption,” he said.

Attacking the Shinde-led government, Khera said, “The Mahayuti government in Maharashtra itself has perpetrated a robbery worth Rs 10,000 crore. These Rs 10,000 crore belong to the people of Maharashtra, which has been given to the government in the form of a tax.”

“Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Limited (MSRDC) opened the price bid for various highway projects in Maharashtra such as Virar-Alibaug Multimodal Corridor (MMC), Pune Ring Road (PRR), etc. The MSRDC had a rule that one bidder would get up to two packages only, but this rule was changed by defining eight projects as tunnel projects with different qualification conditions. This was done to award most of the package to a few entities,” he said without naming anyone.

Khera alleged that the MSRDC changed the pre-qualification criteria for these tunnels projects unlike its previous projects such as the ‘Missing Link and Mumbai Nagpur’ where the pre-qualification criteria for tunnel diameter and length were kept at 50 per cent for diameter and 20 per cent for length in convergence which is what National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH), Border Roads Organisation (BRO), National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) and others do.

“Will Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari be made answerable on this Electoral Bonds scam which duped the people of Maharashtra of thousands of crores? ” he questioned.

Elections to 288 Assembly seats in Maharashtra will be held in a single phase on 20th November. Counting of votes will take place on 23rd November along with Jharkhand.