Strenuously researched and written by Birbal ; my colleague and friend…..
The story mentioned below depicts almost complete picture of anti-national Gang Kejriwal’s conspiracy, their sympathisers, media partners, crony capitalists and aides.
We don’t want to reveal his identity at this point because he (Birbal) and many others are involved in another mission of this kind.
I will come back to you with more very soon.
Adieu.
Raju Parulekar
raju.parulekar@gmail.com
(M) 9820124419
** Related Links & Evidences are given below this article.
Please click the links accordingly for details.**
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Conspiracy Unfolds ; Kejriwal & others
(Shocking revelations of truth behind ’2nd Independence Movement’)
Strenuously researched and written by Birbal ; my colleague and friend…..
The case of False Affidavit:Why is the Government of India trying to protect the NGO Kabir and its media initiative enabled through foreign funding?
On Wednesday, January 16, 2013 the Government of India misled its own judiciary. In an attempt to dupe its own institution, the centre had conceded before the Delhi High Court that it found nothing to warrant a criminal investigation in its inquiry into utilization of foreign funds by a few NGOs affiliated to anti-graft activist Anna Hazare’s civil society organization.’ (Network, 2013) This case was subsequently quashed by the high court believing the centre’s testimony. But the documents which are in possession of this reporter will show how justice was manipulated and then internalized by country’s own government.
In the matter of Advocate Manohar Lal Sharma versus the Union Of India, Central Bureau Of Investigation, Ford Foundation and Kisan Baburao Hazare, the counsels of GOI wrongly informed the court that the Ministry of Home Affairs has given a clean chit to NGO KABIR for its involvement in any political activity. The actual report ‘Inspection of Foreign Contribution Records pertaining to an NGO KABIR (2005-06 to 2011-2012)’by the Controller of Accounts, MHA, New Delhi mentions in bold that “Involvement in Political Activities: As per the minutes of the meeting dated 24 Nov.
2006 of the association, KABIR has played an active role in the Jantar Mantar agitation held under the leadership of Mr.Anna Hazare in the year 2006.” (pls. see point no. 25,page 10 of the report attached with this post) This is in violation to the constitution of India which does not allow any foreign sponsored agitation for any kind of object. It is an amount of wage war only which is liable to be further investigated for further prosecution in accordance of law.
KABIR or ‘Karmyogi Association for Bringing Indian Regeneration’ is an NGO run by Arvind Kejriwal and managed by his key aide Manish Sisodia. According to the president of this organization, this NGO has both national as well as international members. It was registered in the year 1999 under the ‘SOCIETIES REGISTRATION ACT, 1860’ with the registrar of societies Govt. of N.C.T of Delhi. Less is known about its operations untill 15th August 2005 when it officially started furthering the cause of Right to Information Act of India, 2005. In an answer to a RTI petition filed by the website Beyond Headlines in 2009 , KABIR revealed that they had received funds from the Ford Foundation (Rs 86,61,742), PRIA (Rs 2,37,035), Manjunath Shanmugam Trust (Rs 3,70,000), Dutch Embassy (Rs 19,61,968), Association for India’s Development (Rs 15,00,000), India’s Friends Association (Rs 7,86,500), United Nationals Development Programme (Rs12,52,742) while Rs 11,35,857 were collected from individual donations between 2007 to 2010.
Among the many allegations made on KABIR is the funding made by Ford Foundation to the organization in the year 2011 when the Janlokpal movement started. According to various news paper reports and KABIR’s own testimony, it participated actively in the Janlokpal movement. The Foreign Control Regulation Act of India, 2010 prohibits any foreign funding to Indian political organization or the organizations with political nature. The law states that the following persons are prohibited from accepting any kind of foreign contribution:
(a) Candidate for election;
(b) Correspondent, columnist, cartoonist, editor, owner, printer or publisher of a registered newspaper;
(c) Judge, government servant or employee of any entity controlled or owned by the government;
(d) Member of any Legislature;
(e) Political party or its office bearers;
(f) Organisations of a political nature as may be specified;
(g) Associations or company engaged in the production or broadcast of audio news or audiovisual news or current affairs programmes through any electronic mode or form or any other mode of mass communication;
(h) Correspondent or columnist, cartoonist, editor, owner of the association or company referred to in (g) above.
When Kavitha N Ramdas, the present Indian representative of Ford Foundation was reached for an official comment she replied, “In 2010, the foundation reviewed a new grant proposal from KABIR for similar activities. We approved this second grant in February, 2011. However, KABIR notified the foundation in September 2011 that it was not capable of carrying out the planned activities due to an emerging campaign to mobilize the public around anti-corruption efforts. Based on this information from KABIR and the foundation’s own fiscal year schedule, the foundation amicably rescinded its second grant in February 2012, against which no funds had ever been distributed. The rescinded and unpaid grant was then removed from our web site.” She also thanked the writer for bringing this correction to foundation’s notice. When a more detailed answer was sought, the director of Communications, Ford Foundation, Newyork, took on the matter further. He is yet to reply with the details.
On foundation’s association with KABIR, she said, “The foundation’s first grant to KABIR was made in 2007 and was for $197,000 over three years. The grant supported the organization’s efforts to produce training materials on India’s Right-to-Information law, to disseminate information about the effective use of the law, and to help promote transparent and accountable governance. These efforts were carried out satisfactorily and the grant was closed on schedule.”
In her reply Mrs. Ramdas forgot to add the grant made to KABIR in the year 2005, for enabling a ‘media initiative’ to popularize the right to information act, 2005.
But it is very well documented in the foundation’s annual report of the year 2005-06 attached with this post. The president of KABIR has candidly or rather unknowingly confirmed the use of this grant in tying up with various media houses of the country. It is very surprising to see that the Home Ministry provided this NGO with a FCRA license even when the foreign funding to the Indian media is strictly banned under FCRA, 2010.
KABIR’s Annual Report of 2006-07 reveals that it started two media campaigns called Drive against Bribe (Ghoons ko Ghoonsa) and ‘Save the RTI campaign’ from the money given to it by the Ford Foundation:
The Drive Against Bribe Campaign (1st July to 15th July 2006)
Kabir in partnership with one of the highest TRP rated news channels NDTV, newspapers like Hindustan Times, Hindustan (Hindi) and The Hindu started planning for a campaign to promote the use of the RTI Act, 2005 amongst the masses. At the same time the print media at the regional level also joined the campaign. Consequently, 8 media houses publicized right to information in their news dailies and news channels. They are The Successes received from the use of Right to Information were being telecast in the form of advertisements and news stories on various news channels from the first week of June itself. Kabir not only collected such success stories but also coordinated their reporting on various print and electronic media. (From Kabir’s Annual Report 2006-07)
Save the RTI campaign
“The Drive Against Bribe Campaign was still in its follow up stage and the success stories were still being recorded when the Cabinet gave a green signal to the amendments in the RTI Act, 2005. Kabir and Parivartan sensitized and mobilized both the conventional and the unconventional media across the country and called for a press conference in which Annaji announced that many more protest meetings and briefings will be organized on the issue. In the mean time protest demonstrations against the amendments began at Jantar Matar in Delhi. Kabir actively participated in the protest activities along with organizations like NCPRI, Parivartan and MKSS. (political agitation mentioned in the Home Ministry Report) Kabir zealously collected successful examples of RTI Act implementations and disseminated them to the masses through various media to explain that such achievements would not be possible if these amendments were implemented.” (from Kabir’s Annual Report 2006-07)
The nature of these media partnerships remains unclear because Kabir has lost its cashbook for the same period 2006-08. The MHA has reported in its investigation reports that ‘Cash Books w.e.f 2006-08 is not available with the association. As per statement of Mr. Manish Sisodia, the cashbook has been lost somewhere due to shifting of office. It is again questionable that vital documents like the cashbook have been lost. From the perusal of details in the years when the cashbook was maintained i.e 2008-09 to till date, it has been observed that most of the expenditure has been incurred in cash. In the absence of cashbook, the genuineness of the expenditure can’t be ascertained.’ (Home Ministry report, point no. 11, page 8 of 14) When some of the associated media organizations were reached for a comment, they chose not to respond.
RTI and ‘The Foreign Hand’ (From The Right to Information Act in India: The Turbid World of Transparency Reforms, A thesis submitted to the Department of International Development of the London School of Economics and Political Science for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, by Prashant Sharma)
“An issue that arose consistently in the critiques of the mainstream narrative of the RTI movement is the resources needed to finance such campaigns. The Ministry of Home Affairs also constituted an Inter-Ministerial Task Force to develop a draft bill on the right to information, which was also tasked inter alia to conduct a survey of the ‘foreign experience’. “It was a Joint Secretary level committee, only officials and non political figures. That committee went to a few countries and thereafter it gave its report in two volumes. Somehow that report came into my hands, one volume only, and I requested the Home Ministry to give me the other volume, and give me the files on which this committee was constituted, the recommendations they made, and what was the decision of the Home Ministry on those recommendations. They said they have no papers on the subject. I didn’t get anything except one volume, in which they only had copies of the legislations which they had collected from other countries.” Whether the ‘disappearance’ of the second volume was by design or simply a result of poor record management, the familiar trope of the political executive being stymied by the bureaucracy reappears here. “In conversations many years later, V.P.Singh revealed that though he had tried to get a suitable act drafted and introduced in Parliament, the bureaucracy had frustrated him at every step”. Eventually, V.P. Singh’s abilities to outmaneuver the bureaucracy on this issue remained untested, as his government did not last long enough.”
“In sum, the existing explanatory narrative around the RTI Act in India proposes that the Indian experience is particularly noteworthy as not only can its roots be traced to the dusty weather-beaten paths of rural India, but also because the process was divorced from any perceptible international influences or trends. It is this defining characteristic of the Indian ‘struggle’ for an RTI Act that accords it an almost mythical status within FoI-related advocacy, academic and activist spheres. Top-down, elite-led, externally influenced democratic ‘deepening’ after all, presents a far less attractive image compared to a bottom-up local struggle that succeeds in wresting power from above.”
This particular version of the ‘truth’ calls out for deeper examination, not least because of the timing of the enactment of the RTI Act in India. In 1990, only fourteen countries had some sort of a law that provided citizens with a formal and legal procedure to access government information. In 2010, this number stood at eighty four.441 In addition, another fifty countries seem to be on their way to enacting such legislation.442 Some international organisations, including the World Bank, have of late begun to draft disclosure policies somewhat on thelines of national FoI laws. Clearly, there seems to be a well-established global trend of adopting national (and international) FoI legislation and policies across the world, particularly over the last two decades.
An early clue in this direction can be discerned in the enactment of state level FoI laws in India that preceded the national FoI Act of 2002 and the RTI Act of 2005. The specific case relates to the southern state of Karnataka. “[The CHRI] had a major role to play in Karnataka, where there was no people’s movement for RTI, but ADB [Asian Development Bank] was giving a loan, and they said, ‘conditionality’ – have an RTI law. So B.K. Chandrashekhar who was the Information Minister, he knew CHRI was working [on this issue], and he called [them] over, and they sat and drafted the law, not a terribly good law, but definitely not as bad as the Tamil Nadu one.” As a result, the Karnataka Right to Information Act was enacted in 2000. Soon after, in 2001, the President of the Asian Development Bank recommended the grant of a loan of USD 200 million for “infrastructure projects in specified infrastructure sectors in four selected Indian states: Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh”
A similar logic also played out at the national level, albeit in less obvious ways. An important element that informs the allocation of World Bank funds (lent at preferential rates for low- income countries) under its International Development Association (IDA) programme is based on its Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) framework. The CPIA rating for India in 2003 included a section on “Transparency, Accountability and Corruption in the Public Sector” where it stated that “Corruption remains a significant problem. India ranked 71 out of 102 in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions index… With the passage of the Freedom of Information legislation in March 2003 [sic], the GoI has followed in the path of some leading states and taken a significant step forward in improving the legal framework for transparency and this increase in rating reflects that… The effective implementation of this act will remain a major challenge in the next several years…”501 With rewards such as ‘increased ratings’ in the CPIA framework on offer, it comes as no surprise that the Ministry of Finance sent several missives to the DoPT seeking its input on the status of the implementation of the FoI Act to be able to respond to the assessment exercise of the World Bank.
“I think perhaps around 30%-40% of the contribution for bringing the Act was the World Bank and the international community’s pressure on the government, which most of us normally don’t like to acknowledge. My own perception is that the Prime Minister of India unfortunately is fairly influenced by these factors. The World Bank and various international organisations were pressing to get in more transparency, less corruption. This is part of a worldwide agenda they have – they want to do business, they want these as essentials.” (for more read the thesis attached with this post)
In such a scenario Kabir’s activities related to the right to information act of India is heavily objectionable. Its Save the RTI campaign challenged the advice of the then president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Incidentally, while giving his approval to the RTI Act in June 2005, President APJ Abdul Kalam, had emphasised that notings by bureaucrats on files should be privileged, otherwise it could affect the decision-making process. The logic being that the senior bureaucrats would be more interested in covering their backs rather than being forthright. In a communication to the Prime Minister, he had also suggested that the Act should not have a purview over communications between the Head of State and the Head of Government and that the documents emanating from the President’s secretariat were not not brought within the ambit of the Act. Accordingly, in December 2005 (only a month after the RTI Act came into force), Prime Minister Manmohan Singh instructed the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) that ‘file notings’ relating to identifiable individuals, group of individuals, organizations, appointments, matters relating to inquiries and departmental proceedings, should not be disclosed.
Similar objection were raised by the then Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi , “The Union Cabinet has decided to amend the RTI Act to correct “certain ambiguities” and it is based of the objections raised by some government organisations such as UPSC who had objected that while decisions taken could be conveyed, the details and the process as to how the decisions were arrived at could not be: “Decisions can be conveyed, not in terms of details about what the Under Secretary or Joint Secretary wrote or what the Secretary disapproved.” The minister had also claimed that such exemptions also exist in the systems followed by the US, UK and Australia as well.”
Effectively, KABIR’s campaign voiced against the proposed amendments in the RTI campaign which is a democratic right in this country. But it also enabled a media campaign in the country where it severely criticized its own government and democratic institutions using the foreign funding from an organization who is suspected to have links with the CIA. (Please refer to The Ford Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic collaboration with the Secret Police by James Petras 15 December 2001) When this reporter sought a comment from the Ford Foundation for its suspected links with CIA, it’s Director of Communication, Newyork never responded back.
During the ‘Save the RTI’ media campaign a series of editorials were written across the newspapers in the country supporting Kabir’s stand on file notings in the RTI act. Kabir’s president says these editorials were written by its in house media team which was passed on the media houses. For a full list of editorials written on the RTI campaign please visit http://rti.aidindia.org/content/blogcategory/25/100/. While nothing can be proved in absence of cashbook for the same period, a detailed inquiry is a must sought to justify the intentions of these articles.
NDTV’s partnership with Kabir deserves a special mention. Starting with KABIR in 2006, they were involved in all its media campaigns. They also announced National RTI Awards in association with Public Cause Research Foundation (PCRF), an organization set up by Magsaysay awardee Arvind Kejriwal to acknowledge those who have displayed exemplary commitment to RTI Act. In 2011, NDTV went on to give Arvind Kejriwal and Anna Hazare the Indian of the year award.
Similarly a host of newspapers also borrowed news from Kabir, remembers an old time associate of Kejriwal. “He [Arvind Kejriwal] was directly involved with editors and proprietors of these newspapers. After the media campaign, members from Kabir became regular at newspaper offices. Specific RTI beats were created within newspapers which are now filing 30 RTI applications in a single day, less is known about the petitions which don’t make it to the newspapers.” This member was once part of Arvind Kejriwal’s movement Parivartan but he left the group in 2004 on the issue of foreign funding from the Ford Foundation. Parivartan then had a rule that no outside institutional funding will be accepted by the organization.
The Home Ministry report also notes that amount of Rs. 17,68,261/- has been paid to different RTI activists throughout the country between the years 2008 to 2011-12. However, no agreements between the individuals and association were made available to the inspection party. (Home Ministry Report, Point no. 8, page 8 of 14)
Less is known about centre’s motivation to rid KABIR of serious charges reported by the home ministry investigation. But the report itself falls short of mentioning anything about the organizations working during the Janlokpal movement, for which the inquiry was sought by the petitioner. There are also no references about Ford Foundation in the report. With just a month before the election, who is it that the Indian government trying to save?
What is it trying to save? – KABIR, Ford Foundation, its own media or the false sense of democracy in the country.
Please click the links mentioned below accordingly for details….
1 ) Inspection of Foreign Contribution Records pertaining to an NGO KABIR (2005-06 to 2011-2012)’
2) Kabir – Annual Report 2006-07
3) kabir – registration certificate
4) The Right to Information Act in India and The Turbid World of Transparency Reforms By Prashant Sharma
Thanx,
BIRBAL….
Source: http://rajuparulekar.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/conspiracy-unfolds-kejriwal-others-shocking-revelations/
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