Escalating its fight with Greenpeace India, MHA stops NGO from accepting any foreign funds

NEW DELHI: Escalating its fight with Greenpeace India, which has been leading a campaign against many industrial projects, the Rajnath Singh-led home ministry has now stopped the NGO from accepting any foreign funds for the next six months and has frozen its all seven bank accounts.

The NGO termed the move as a “campaign being waged against dissent” after the MHA uploaded a four-page order dated April 9 on its website listing eight specific counts of alleged irregularities on part of Greenpeace India.

The alleged irregularities include the NGO shifting its office from Chennai to Bengaluru and transferring its foreign donations from designated accounts to five other bank accounts without intimating the gover nment, “willfully suppressing” payment of annual salary of €56,591 to a foreign Greenpeace activist Greg Muttitt who was on secondment to the NGO and funding cost of bail petitions and writs of an associated NGO and their activists.

The order also cited constant under-reporting by NGO of its foreign donations, citing a “most glaring example” of an opening balance of ‘nil’ foreign contributions shown in 2008-09 while the amount was Rs 6.6 crore. The NGO dismissed the charges. “This is a smear, pure and simple. All of this was put before Delhi High Court when we brought a case against the Centre, and the court decided in our favour.

This feels like a revealing moment, one that says much more about the MHA than it does about Greenpeace,” NGO’s ED Samit Aich said. HC in January ordered release of `1.87 crore sent to NGO by its parent organisation, saying “there was no material on record to restrict it”. HC also lifted a foreign-travel ban on the NGO activist Priya Pillai. “We will continue to work towards clean air, clean water and inclusive development in India. This does not pause our fight for our environment. We’ll respond to the MHA.”