Skip to main content

Rights group alleges BJP leader forged documents to divert attention from fight against communal forces

Shabnam Hashmi
By A Representative
Making a serious allegation, top human rights NGO, Anhad, founded in the wake of the communal riots in Gujarat, has said that senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Purshottam Rupala "forged documents" to defame the organisation. In a statement, it has said, Anhad has been under "concerted attack" for the last few months, and the attack is lead by Rupala, who has written letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against Anhad, even as leaking "half-baked information against Anhad to various small time websites assumingly supported by them."
Clarifying, the statement said, "Rupala has attached FC 6 forms for 2009-10 and 2010-11 with his letter to the Prime Minister. He has specifically raised the question of Anhad hiding grant from Hivos. Rupala writes: “I also want to highlight a very important point which has come to my knowledge, that Anhad has not declared to the Ministry of Home that it has also received Euro 3580 from Hivos”.
The statement comments, "The fact of the matter is that FC 6 forms submitted to the Prime Minister of India by the Rajya Sabha MP and BJP Gujarat president Mr Purshottam Rupala are forged."
Elucidating, the statement said, "Rupala has said in his letter that Anhad has not declared to the Ministry of Home that it received Euros 3580 from Hivos. He has submitted a copy of the FC-6 form which shows that Oxfam India gave Rs 18,42,735 to Anhad in 2009-2010."
"Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010 (FCRA 2010) was passed by Rajya Sabha on August 19, 2010 with a view to replace the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 1976. The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 came into effect from May 1, 2011", the statement reads, underlining, "There was no online filing of accounts in the year 2009-10 and FC-6 forms did not exist in 2009-10 and 2010-11."
In fact, the statement said, "Anhad did not file any online form for year ending March 31, 2010. It became mandatory to file online forms only in 2011-12. In 2009-10 and 2010-11 FC3 forms existed and not FC-6."
Further, Rupala’s "forged" FC 6 document address of Oxfam India is shown as Plot No 19, Amravati Cooperative Housing Society, Secunderabad- 500009. In forged FC 6 form for 2010-11 Christian Aid’s address is shown as Calcutta. Both Oxfam Indian and Christian Aid had offices in Delhi during these years. "The document is neither signed by Anhad’s Managing Trustee Shabnam Hashmi nor the chartered accountant", the statement asserts.
Attaching a copy of the FC3 form submitted to Ministry of Home Affairs signed by Hashmi and the chartered accountant for 2009-10, the statement says, it "clearly shows all the amounts received from different donors, including Hivos. The amount mentioned above, Rs 18,42,735.00, was not given by Oxfam India only but by different donors Oxfam India Rs 12,15,000.00, Hivos Rs 2,14,785.00, Action Aid International Rs 1,90,000.00, Sama Rs 40,000, Hope for Childre Rs 1,82,950.00."
The statement further said, "Following Rupala’s attack many of his cronies have written on various small time websites raising questions especially about Christian Aid’s funds. Christian Aid supports Anhad’s community work, women empowerment, livelihood, disaster risk reduction work in Bihar and Kashmir."
The statement alleges, "Rupala is not only ignorant about Anhad’s work but also paranoid. In 2007 he gave a call to fight Anhad, delcaring Anhad had brought 1,000 people from outside to do plays against Gujarat. The fact of the matter is, these were in fact 45 young activists from within Gujarat who travelled on three routes and performed all over Gujarat taking the preamble of the Indian constitution to the people of Gujarat."
"It is very clear that by specifically targeting Christian Aid they want to use the communal card which they have perfected over years", Anhad statement alleges, adding, "Anhad was formed in 2003 and our major work is safeguarding democracy and secularism. In Gujarat, where on an average assembly doesn’t work for more than 30 days per year, where deputy speaker is not appointed, where MLAs are told what questions to ask, and where senior police officers are sent to take MLAs' signatures on blank question forms and various reports questioning all undemocratic practices are never placed on the floor of the house, talking of democracy and secularism by default becomes anti Modi."
The statement says, "Every single voice within Gujarat, RB Sreekumar, Sanjeev Bhatt and others, have been under attack. RTI activists Amit Jetwa and Nadeem Sayed have been killed. Now that Modi has national ambitions they are attacking every civil society voice including Anhad, Harsh Mander, Gagan Sethi, Teesta Seetalvad, and so on. Anyone who can expose ra Modi’s communal agenda as well as the myth of Gujarat development at the national level is under attack."
The statement attaches following statements to clarify its points:
Document one
Document two

Comments

TRENDING

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor*  This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat*  As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu.  He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra*   It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit. 

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.