The US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said Sunday it had cancelled a $21-million grant to the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS) for “voter turnout in India”, prompting BJP’s Amit Malviya and Rajeev Chandrasekhar to target the Opposition Congress over what they called “external interference in India’s electoral process”. In a post on X, DOGE, which is headed by Elon Musk, said: “US taxpayer dollars were going to be spent on the following items, all which have been cancelled.” One of the items mentioned was “$486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for “inclusive and participatory political process” in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India. The post did not mention the Indian agency or entity meant to get the grant or any further details. The website of CEPPS remained unavailable, as did the website of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which funded CEPPS. Ever since President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office on January 20, the DOGE, led by Musk, has been cutting grants given by previous administrations and closing programmes of USAID. Responding to the DOGE post, BJP national IT department in-charge Amit Malviya said on X: “…$21M for voter turnout? This definitely is external interference in India’s electoral process. Who gains from this? Not the ruling party for sure!”. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, former Union Minister and BJP MP, in a post on X, said: “Smoking gun of Interference and undermining of Democracies - Shocking that on one hand there is discussion on democratic values and other hand there is brazen undermining of democratic nations… It reinforces the belief that almost all these “protests” had external funding/forces and puppetmasters behind it. I hope we investigate the money trail in India fully and who did what with the “USAID” money.” According to information available on the website of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, a partner of CEPPS, “CEPPS is a nonprofit organization that pools the expertise of three premier international organizations – the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems – to support elections and political transitions across the globe. Our mission is to work together with local, regional and global partners to build resilient, inclusive and accountable democracies.” It said CEPPS was independently established in 1995 and was funded by the USAID Global Elections and Political Transitions Program. “Operating as a consortium, CEPPS provides USAID and other donors with the capacity to deliver complex democracy, rights and governance (DRG) programming at scale across the world,” the IFES website stated. IFES had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Election Commission of India on May 17, 2012 to make “available the knowledge and experience of ECI to election managers and practitioners around the world through Commission’s India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management,” an ECI press note had stated. Malviya, in another post on X, referenced the MoU, which was signed by then Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi on behalf of ECI, and hit out at the Congress for allegedly “handing over the entire Election Commission of India to foreign operators”. Quraishi, through a series of posts on X, rejected the charge. He said the MoU was signed with IFES in 2012, like the ECI had with many other agencies and election management bodies to facilitate training at ECI’s IIDEM, which had just been set up. “There was no financing or even promise of finance involved in MoU, forget X or Y amount. The MoU in fact made it clear in black and white that there would be no financial and legal obligation of any kind on either side. This stipulation was made at two different places to leave no scope for any ambiguity. Any mention of any funds in connection with this MoU is completely false and malicious,” Quraishi said. The ECI did not respond to calls and messages from The Indian Express for comment. IFES CEO Anthony Banbury had attended the Summit for Democracy in Delhi in 2023 as well as the ECI’s conference for international election management bodies held here last month.
