Teesta Setalvad sent fresh MHA notice over funds

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When contacted, a senior functionary of Sabrang Trust confirmed that they had received an intimation from the MHA that a team was going to inspect their book of accounts. The official refused to be identified.

The Sabrang Trust and Sabrang Communication and Publishing Private Limited (SCPPL), a private company owned by Setalvad, had received funds to the tune of $90,000 in 2004-05 and $2,00,000 in 2006-09 from the Ford Foundation, said a report sent by Gujarat government to MHA, quoting figures from official replies furnished by the Foundation to the Ahmedabad Crime Branch.

MHA officials will be scrutinizing the records of SCPPL, primarily on four grounds:
1. The FCRA Act prohibits funding of foreign journalists and editors from the organisation’s account. There are allegations against SCPPL that it diverted foreign donations received from Ford Foundation.

2. For allegedly not utilising the funds it was meant for.

3.  For allegedly providing secretarial services to the other two NGOs — Sabrang Trust and CJP — from the same administrative funds corpus. For not paying service tax for doing so.

4.  SCPPL, Sabrang Trust and CJP were running from the same office.

“Based on our earlier inspection report, we had prepared a preliminary report and the second visit pertains to more queries that have cropped up. It’s a kind of showcause notice, which we give to an NGO before cancelling its registration,” said a senior official.

The Gujarat government had in March complained to the MHA that the Foundation funded “anti-India” activities of Setalvad’s NGOs — Sabrang Trust and the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) — and requested that the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration of the two NGOs be cancelled. In April, the MHA had put the Foundation under the “prior approval category”, which meant that all funds from the organisation to recipients in India would have to be cleared by the government. The international NGO was also put on the Home Ministry’s watch list in the interest of “national security”.