New Delhi: India is “deeply” troubled by reports of a US aid agency having funded voter turnout programmes in the South Asian nation and is looking into its activities, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Friday. This comes after US President Donald Trump alleged the funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to India was spent on getting someone elected.
“We have seen information that has been put out by the US administration regarding certain USAID activities and funding. These are obviously deeply troubling,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at a press briefing.
He added, “This has led to concerns about foreign interference in India’s internal affairs. Relevant departments and agencies are looking into the matter.”
People familiar with the matter said various government ministries had begun the process of looking into USAID’s activities, and the process would take time given the number of ministries that have to look into the issue.
Since Trump’s return to power, both the president and Elon Musk, who leads the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have targeted the agency that provides humanitarian assistance abroad. Trump has previously alleged that the money from USAID was going towards toppling foreign governments.
On Sunday, the official account of DOGE on X (formerly Twitter) put out a post saying it had cancelled a $21 million spending for “voter turnout in India”.
It set off a political firestorm within India with both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress accusing the other of benefitting from the money.
US taxpayer dollars were going to be spent on the following items, all which have been cancelled:
– $10M for "Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision"
– $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop "a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills"
– $2.3M for "strengthening…
— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 15, 2025
Trump Thursday added fuel to the fire by labelling the funding to India a “kickback scheme” and alleging that USAID was “trying to get somebody else elected” without giving further details. He also did not offer any proof of his allegations.
India and the US have also signed a number of agreements that utilise the services of USAID as a funding partner. Just last year, India and the US signed an agreement to set up the Gandhi-King Development Foundation (GKDF) by October 2024.
The agreement authorised USAID to set up the Foundation named after M.K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. It was a part of the Gandhi-King Scholarly Exchange Initiative Act, signed into law by Trump in December 2020 during his first presidency.
The act set up three institutes—an “exchange programme” in the US for 20 scholars each year, a global academy in the US, which has been functional since 2021, and the GKDF. It had also authorised $30 million in funding for the GKDF for 2021.
However, there were a number of challenges to setting up GKDF in India, including the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), according to media reports. Such initiatives highlight the scope of activities of USAID within India, which have received government sanction in the past.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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