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Thursday, May 7, 2015

NEW DELHI: After turning the screws on Greenpeace India and the Ford Foundation, the home ministry has now turned its gaze on to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the eponymous non-governmental organisation founded and run by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda.

A senior official told ET that the home ministry was looking into the foundation’s role into the funding of a prominent Indian health body following inputs received by it from intelligence agencies, but insisted the exercise was an informal one and in preliminary stages.

“It is not a formal inquiry. It’s only a look into the affairs after certain information has come to our notice and we are in the process of checking it out,” the home ministry official said on the condition of anonymity. The official insisted that the exercise was also different in intensity and scope from the ministry’s recent actions against Greenpeace India, whose FCRA licence (which enables it to access foreign donations) has been suspended, and Ford Foundation, which has been placed under the ’Prior Permission’ category under which the government vets donations made by it to Indian organisations. A spokesperson for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said it was unaware of the home ministry’s move. “We have not been approached by the government of India,” the spokesperson said.