In the backdrop of the historic community reception for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York on September 28, continuing tensions over the alleged lack of transparency surrounding sponsorship and ticket allocation has led to quarrels over ad space, complaints about tickets not arriving in the mail and concerns surrounding undeclared fundraising, possibly running into many thousands of dollars.
This week The Hindu has obtained copies of both a cautionary letter and a formal legal notice issued by Shalabh Kumar, a prominent Indian-American from Illinois, to the office of Bharat Barai, the New York-based community leader and President of the Indian-American Community Foundation, which is responsible for organising Mr. Modi’s event at Madison Square Garden.
In the letter Mr. Kumar, who expressed disenchantment with what he perceived as the opacity of the fundraising process, said that after IACF representatives had initially discussed the possibility of his organisation, the National Indian-American Public Policy Institute (NIAPPI), being a “diamond sponsor” at the $25,000 level and accordingly receiving 20 VIP seats, ten dinner seats, a centre-spread advertisement, and “Platinum frequency display on Madison Square screens.”
However, he argued in the letter addressed to Mr. Barai, “NIAPPI [was] all set to go on the 11th of Sept with a $25,000 package, until you intervened and made [an IACF representative] take his offer back within 2 hours of your dictatorial and discourteous email to our NIAPPI manager…”
Mr. Kumar also said that NIAPPI “hereby demands an itemised list of funds raised [and] monies spent… [of] all benefits offered to any and all, including but not limited to, reserved seats in MSG, Garden Screen Views, Dinner tickets at Embassy Dinner… and reaffirmation and acceptance of the offer made [earlier].
The legal notice that Mr. Kumar sent days after this letter, on September 17, went on to reiterate these points and caution that it could involve Attorney Generals of the relevant states to look into the allegations, or even alert the Internal Revenue Service.
However when The Hindu contacted the IACF its spokesperson Anand Shah said, “We are committed to transparency, but on standard terms - America has very stringent requirements which we will exceed.”
Similarly Ramesh Shah of IACF said to NIAPPI in a prior email, which The Hindu has seen, “The programme is free to 90 per cent of the people as per desire of the Honourable PM… [and] no one is receiving any special treatment and we are monitoring very closely for fair and equitable way.”
Anand Shah added, “Free tickets complicates everything, because we want to make sure people come… We want the programme to be representative of our community, and needed to sign up more than 400 organisations in less than 1 week.”
Mr. Kumar has since indicated to The Hindu that he may prefer to avoid taking any legal action until after Mr. Modi has left for India, so as to avoid any further disputes during the vist.
