The Congress on Friday said the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF) issue raised by the BJP government was a "manufactured charge" and "diversionary tactic" to deflect attention from the LAC crisis, and the money the NGO received from China was used for the welfare of differently-abled people and research on Sino-India relations.
"Diversion, disinformation and distraction are the diabolical hallmarks of the BJP and Modi government when exposed and caught lying on issues of national security and territorial integrity," the opposition party's chief spokesperson, Randeep Singh Surjewala, said in a statement.
He said Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda and the Narendra Modi government keep referring to a 2005 grant of Rs 1.45 crore received by the RGF from the Embassy of China for the purpose of a welfare programme for differently-abled people and research on Sino-India relationships.
"This grant was used for the purposes specified. RGF accounts were duly audited and statutory returns filed under the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) to the Government of India. This grant has been duly reflected in all filings to the Income-Tax department and Home Ministry and no authority has ever found any wrongdoing of any nature," Surjewala said.
He also said pursuant to the unprecedented Tsunami in the last week of 2004, the foundation received a "modest" amount of Rs 20 lakh from the Prime Minister's Relief Fund in financial year 2005, which was duly utilised to undertake relief activities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
"We want to tell PM Modi and BJP president Nadda that their total failure to protect national security and the territorial integrity of India cannot be washed away in the cacophony of manufactured and desperate allegations vis-a-vis grants received by the RGF, which have been duly audited and reported both to the Income-Tax department as also to the Home Ministry," he said.
Nadda had alleged that the Prime Minister's Relief Fund had donated money to the "family-run" RGF when the Congress-led UPA was in power, claiming that it was a "brazen fraud" and big betrayal of the people of the country.
The BJP chief, who targeted the Congress and the Gandhi family on Thursday for the RGF allegedly accepting donations from the Chinese embassy, also posted a photograph of documents to back his charge on Twitter.
"To suppress these facts, BJP president JP Nadda, the Modi government and their puppet allies in the media have unleashed a diabolical design of disinformation, distraction and diversion from the real issue of Chinese incursions and restoration of status quo ante, which is the solemn duty of the government," Surjewala said.
He said the facts in the public domain clearly establish that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has "deliberately misled" the nation on the issue of Chinese transgressions and the brazen occupation of our territory.
"Unmistakable facts in the public domain are that the Chinese have committed grave transgressions in the Galwan Valley including at PP-14, where 20 of our jawans were martyred on June 15-16, 2020. In fact, the Chinese have reoccupied PP-14 and constructed tents and other structures," the Congress leader said.
He added that Chinese forces have also transgressed in the Pangong Tso area and constructed a huge number of hostile structures and bunkers, and the latest act of illegal incursion by the neighbouring country was in the Depsang Plains, where the Chinese have intruded 18 km across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) into our territory up to the Y-Junction, also known as "Bottleneck".
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