Civil society activists write to PM

Civil society representatives, including National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy, Medha Patkar and Vandana Shiva have accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of suppressing dissent. Countering his theory of a foreign hand manipulating the opposition to GM crops and nuclear energy projects, they said the UPA government was working under the influence of the same foreign hand. “We are not China,” they wrote to the PM. The group also included former chief election commissioner J M Lyngdoh, former chief justice V R Krishna Iyer and three former Navy chiefs. Copies of the letter was sent to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha. Referring to the prime minister' s comments in an interview to a science journal, linking foreign funding of NGOs with the opposition to nuclear power plants and GM crops in India, the letter said it was " highly inappropriate misrepresentation of facts”.