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A day after Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said her party, the BJP, intends to bring back electoral bonds, former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram termed her the most 'innocent minister' in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet, adding, tonue-in-cheek, that at times she was the last person to know what was happening in her ministry.
"Honourable finance minister is the most innocent minister in council of ministers, and she is sometimes last person to know what is happening in ministry of Finance," the Congress leader told reporters on Sunday. In an interview with a reputed English daily on Saturday, Sitharaman said her party intended to bring back electoral bonds in some form or the other after holding consultations with all stakeholders, if elected in the ongoing general elections. Electoral bonds, a political funding scheme, was scrapped by the Supreme Court in February, which termed it unconstitutional. "We still have to do a lot of consultation with stakeholders and see what is it that we have to do to make or bring in a framework which will be acceptable to all, primarily retain the level of transparency and completely remove the possibility of black money entering into this," the Finance Minister told the daily, adding that it was yet to be decided if the Union government will seek a review of the top court's order. Supreme Court, in a ruling in February, struck down the Centre's Electoral Bond Scheme while asking the State Bank of India, the country's biggest lender, to stop issuing such bonds immediately. In compliance with the Supreme Court directive, the Election Commission uploaded data on electoral bonds on its official website. The data was provided by the SBI on the directions of the apex court. (ANI)
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