Income Tax Raids Was Undertaken Without Giving Reason, Says Oxfam India
The Oxfam alleged that the Income Tax survey was undertaken without giving a reason. It said that in January 2022 they had a detailed week-long audit of the FCRA accounts by the auditors appointed by the FCRA division. In a latest development in connection with the Income Tax raids which were going on for three days at multiple locations and at the offices of Centre for Policy Research, a think tank, Oxfam India, Bengaluru-based non-profit Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation (IPSMF) in connection with the alleged tax evasion, all the firms submitted they did not do anything unlawful. Oxfam India on Friday issued a statement and said that the Income Tax department officials conducted an Income Tax 'survey' at its Delhi based office from September 7 to September 9. "During these 35 plus hours of non-stop survey, the Oxfam India team members were not allowed to leave the premises; the internet was shut down and all the mobile phones were confiscated. The Income Tax survey team took away hundreds of pages of data pertaining to finances and programmes of Oxfam India. They also took all the data by cloning the Oxfam India server and the private mobile phones of the senior leadership team
US lawmakers seek congressional consultation on IPEF
On the eve of the US hosting the first in-person Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) Ministerial in Los Angeles, a group of more than 40 influential lawmakers on Thursday urged the Biden administration for a robust engagement with the Congress on this critical trade issue. A letter written by Chair of the House Appropriations Committee Rosa DeLauro, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, along with 42 House Democrats urged the Biden administration to learn from the failures of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The first in-person IPEF Ministerial in Los Angeles, beginning Thursday, is being attended by Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal among others. "We urge you to consider the lessons of past trade negotiations that too often were conducted in secret, with members of Congress, workers and their unions, environmentalists, and consumer advocates largely unable to review text and ensure their interests were addressed,” the lawmakers wrote. "…If negotiations on IPEF and APEP proceed, we urge you to ensure that any agreement benefits American workers, not corporate offshoring, and to provide Congress and the public with clearer insight into your approach to the negotiation process, including through robust consultation throughout the process and congressional approval of any binding commitments,” it said. The letter
Income Tax Searches At Think Tank CPR, Oxfam, And Trust That Funds Media
Bengaluru-based trustIPSMF funds some media organisations known for investigative stories that question the governments of the day Searches at the Centre for Policy Research office in Delhi's Chanakyapuri started around noon. The Income Tax Department is conducting searches at the Delhi offices of independent think tank Centre for Policy Research and charity organisation Oxfam India; and at Bengaluru-based Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation (IPSMF) that partly funds a number of digital media outlets such as The Caravan, The Print and Swarajya. No response has yet been received from any of the organisations facing action. Sources in the tax department told NDTV that the "surveys" are connected to simultaneous action in Haryana, Maharashtra and Gujarat, among other places, "over funding of more than 20 registered but non-recognised political parties". News agency PTI said, citing sources, that the action is part of a probe over foreign donations. No official statement is out yet. Bengaluru-based trust IPSMF funds some organisations known for investigative stories that question the governments of the day. The most recent cover story in The Caravan — a magazine and portal backed by the Foundation — questioned a probe report that cleared PM Narendra Modi of any role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. The Supreme
Indian Christians welcome top court’s move on persecution
States ordered to verify allegations of persecution after federal government described cases as fake Christian leaders have lauded India’s top court for directing the states to verify allegations of persecution against the community people after the federal government refuted their complaints as baseless. “We are satisfied with the Supreme Court order,” Archbishop Peter Machado of the Archdiocese of Bangalore (now Bengaluru) told UCA News on Sept. 5. Archbishop Machado, based in Bengaluru, capital of southern Karnataka state, is one of the petitioners in the public interest litigation (PIL) that sought direction to end the persecution against Christians in the country. A division bench comprising Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli in an interim order directed chief secretaries of eight states to verify allegations of persecution of Christians listed in the PIL. The verification, the court said, would help it know the reality after the federal government described the incidents listed in the PIL as fake cases and urged the court to dismiss the petition. The top court in its Sept. 1 order also directed the states to provide information such as preliminary police reports, status of investigation, arrests made and charges filed. The top court also directed the petitioners to provide a detailed breakdown of the
Statue vandalized, parish priest’s vehicle burnt in Punjab
Patti, Aug 31, 2022: Some unidentified miscreants on August 31 vandalized a Marian statue kept in front of a church in Patti, an old town in the northern Indian state of Punjab. They also set ablaze the car of the parish priest. According to a message from Father Thomas Poochalil, the parish priest of Infant Jesus Catholic Church in Patti, the “shocking incident” took place around 12:45 am. While some kept the security guards under gun point two others attacked the statue and the car. According to a report in truescoopnews.com, four people were involved in the act. It also reported that Christians jammed the Patti-Khemkaran road in the morning. They also staged a sin-in demanding justice as well as the arrest of the accused. Police tried to convince the people to calm down. Father Poochalil said the miscreants raised slogans, ‘We are Khalistanis.” The church’s CCTV footage shows the miscreants taking the head of Mother Mary’s statue with them. The parish comes under the diocese of Jalandhar and Patti town near Tarn Taran is some 50 km south of Amritsar, the holy city of Sikhs. Father Poochalil said the parish has informed the police, who have started investigation into the incident. The priest sought prayers for the
Odisha people observe Kandhamal violence’s 14th anniversary
Bhubaneswar, Aug 26, 2022: A state-level peace and harmony convention was held in Odisha on the fourteenth anniversary of the Kandhamal communal massacre in the eastern Indian state. More than 300 civil society groups, political leaders, journalists, lawyers, writers, students, and academicians, including priests, and nuns across the state joined the day-long peace and goodwill convention August 25 at Geet Govind Bhawan, Bhubaneswar, the state capital. The chief speakers at the convention were Prakash Yashwant Ambedkar, a former Member of the Parliament, and Arfa Khanum Sherwani, a renowned journalist and the senior editor of the Wire online portal. Sister Justine Geetanjali, a member of the Odisha unit of the Citizens for Communal Harmony Peace and Justice, in her introductory remark briefed about the current state of affairs in the country and about the Kandhamal riots. Ambedkar, the grandson of the founder of the Constitution, Baba Saheb Ambedkar, who addressed the first session, raised questions on sensitive incidents such as the case of Bilkis Bano. He said injustice done to the exploited class is not known. It has been going on for many decades. “Ambedkar made many provisions for the benefit of the people in the Constitution. He ensured equality, women’s protection, and justice for all.
Kerala’s Syrian Christian history gets a Hungarian saviour—new keyboard, old manuscripts
István Perczel could well be a modern-day Indiana Jones for Kerala’s elite approximately 60,00,000-strong Syrian Christian community spread across the globe. But instead of engaging in gun fights and discovering lost treasure and ancient cities, The Hungarian scholar of Byzantine history and early Christianity is bringing to life a forgotten body of Malayalam scholarly literature—one that is written in a script based on the Syriac alphabet, an ancient writing system that dates back to the 1st century AD, and shares similarities with Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic and Sogdian. He is now on a quest to develop an InScript keyboard for the lost script—the first of its kind—for which he had to decode thousands of palm-leaf documents lying forgotten in cupboards. They were arguably the oldest written historical records of the Syrian, or Saint Thomas Christians, a community that converted long before colonisation and missionary expansion in India. Most of the records, popularly believed to have been destroyed in the 16th century by the Roman Catholic Church, are written in Garshuni Malayalam. While Garshuni is traditionally referred to as Arabic in a Syriac script, the records Perczel is digitising are Malayalam written in the Syriac script. It was used by the Kerala Syrian Christian
In Godhra, Bilkis Bano convicts felicitated by RSS member soon after their release
One of the convicts spoke to Scroll.in and claimed he was innocent. He also claimed he had come home straight from prison, a fact belied by photos of the event. In Godhra, Bilkis Bano convicts felicitated by RSS member soon after their release Eleven men convicted in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case walked out free on August 15. They were felicitated at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Trust auditorium by a member of the RSS. | Sitting in his family-run grocery store on Tuesday, flanked by a host of relatives, 47-year-old Radhshyam Shah kept referring to himself as the “accused”. When it was pointed out to him that he had, in fact, been convicted of gangrape – a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court – his response was matter-of-fact: “Yes, the court did say that.” “But,” he was quick to add, “we are innocent.” In 2008, Shah and 11 other men from Randhikpur in Gujarat’s Dahod district were sentenced to life imprisonment for raping a young pregnant woman from their village, Bilkis Yakub Rasul Patel, more commonly known as Bilkis Bano, and for murdering 14 of her relatives during the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat. Those killed included a day-old infant and Bano’s three-year-old daughter. The
Indian govt denies persecution of Christians
Seeks dismissal of a petition for urgent intervention of Supreme Court to end attacks on Christians and their institutions India’s federal government has sought dismissal of a petition that sought to end the persecution of Christians, saying there could be a “hidden oblique agenda” behind it. In its affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on Aug. 16, the government said there seemed to be an agenda behind filing “such deceptive petitions.” The government alleged that such petitions were meant to “create unrest throughout the country and perhaps for getting assistance from outside the country to meddle with internal affairs of our nation.” The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore, the National Solidarity Forum and the Evangelical Fellowship of India, said that an average of 45 to 50 violent attacks against Christian institutions and priests were reported every month. A record 57 attacks were recorded in May, the petition said and sought urgent intervention from the top court. Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the federal government, told the court that such “half-baked and self-serving facts and self-serving articles and reports culminating into a petition — based upon mere conjectures — clearly appear to be for an oblique purpose.” Describing the petition as
FIACONA Congratulates the Union of India on Her 75th Independence Day:
August 16, 2022. Washington DC. The Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America (FIACONA) congratulates the people of India on the 75th Anniversary of her independence from British Rule. FIACONA applauds the resilience of the people of India and their commitment to a democratic system of government in the face of organized assault on the institutions of democracy by non-state actors and their affiliated political parties. The unprecedented number of attacks against Christian and other religious minority groups and the rise in hate crimes against them should be a serious concern for all democratic nations around the world. It is important for India to stay true to its founding principles of liberal democratic values. Right-wing politics has the potential to threaten stability in the Indian Ocean corridor. A strong pull toward dictatorial tendencies will weaken the Union of India like it has weakened other countries in that region. Such internal developments will lead to social unrest and political instability internally, as has been in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. India, the largest democracy in the world, should emerge as a leader and example to other democracies in the world. A strong and vibrant India that respects the freedom of all its people irrespective
