Sabrang Trust did not violate foreign funding norms: Setalvad

Social activist Teesta Setalvad today denied violations of Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) provisions by her NGOs, after Gujarat government demanded the Union Home Ministry to probe the functioning of her organisations.
She, in a statement, also said that her NGOs had co-operated with a Union Home Ministry team which had visited her offices.
"Trustees and office bearers of Sabrang Trust as well as Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) do not see themselves as above the law. They believe in the law of the land and expect others to do so as well. We believe that neither Sabrang Trust nor CJP violated FCRA provisions or for that matter any law of the land," Setalvad said in the statement issued today.

The development came after Gujarat government wrote to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh seeking a probe into the accounts of her NGO Sabrang Trust, for allegedly "misusing" foreign funds to create "communal disharmony" here.
Gujarat's Minister of State (MoS) for Home Rajnikant Patel had said the state government had written a letter to the Union Home Minister to probe the role of Teesta Setalwad's Sabrang Trust after learning that funds sent to her NGO were misused.
"We learnt that funds which Sabrang Trust received, especially from the (US-based) Ford Foundation, were actually used for disturbing communal harmony here and carrying out anti-national propaganda against India in foreign countries," Patel had said.

"According to information given by the Ford Foundation (to state police), we came to know that she had used the funds to carry out a campaign against the Gujarat government and also against the country," Patel said.
Patel also said that the US-based funding group Ford Foundation had donated more than five lakh US dollars to Setalvad's NGO and the Gujarat government had requested the Union government to probe the use of that money.