NEW DELHI: The political row over the alleged US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) funding in Indian elections escalated on Monday, with the BJP and the Congress trading barbs over the allegations.
The BJP’s attack came after a statement from DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, that it had cancelled a series of international funding projects, including $21 million allocated for voter turnout in India.
Targeting the Congress, BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya hinted that the previous Congress-led UPA government had gained from the funding.
“$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. $21m for voter turnout? This definitely is external interference in India’s electoral process. Who gains from this? Not the ruling party, for sure,” Malviya fired.
Responding to the allegation, senior Congress leader Pawan Khera asked the ruling party how Congress could sabotage its electoral prospects by getting this so-called “external interference.”
“In 2012, when ECI allegedly got this funding from USAID, the ruling party was Congress. So, by his logic, the ruling party (Congress) was sabotaging its own electoral prospects by getting this so-called ‘external interference’,” he said. “And that the opposition BJP won the 2014 elections because of Soros/USAID,” he added.
Meanwhile, former CEC SY Quraishi rejected the reports that US agency funding was used to raise voter turnout in India when he headed the poll body. In a post on X, Quraishi said that in 2012, there was an MoU with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems for training, but that involved no financing.
“There was an MOU with IFES in 2012 when I was CEC like we had with many other agencies and Election Management Bodies to facilitate training for desirous countries at ECI’s training and resource centre, IDEM, which was very new at that stage. There was no financing or even promise of finance involved in MoU, forget X or Y amount,” he added.
He said any mention of funds in connection with this MoU is entirely false and malicious. “The MoU, in fact, made it clear 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,” Quraishi said.