How a false DOGE claim ignited a political firestorm in India

NEW DELHI – It began last week with a social media post from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, listing foreign grants it said it had canceled. Buried in the middle was a reference to “$21M for voter turnout in India.”

It was soon front-page news in New Delhi. Prominent members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – which has long made unfounded allegations of foreign influence in national elections – seized on it as evidence of a nefarious U.S. plot.

“The recent revelation has left me shocked,” Indian Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar said Friday. “The democratic process of this country was sought to be manipulated to dent the purity of our electoral system.”

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Two days before, President Donald Trump had fanned the flames at an investment summit in Miami: “What do we need to spend $21 million for voter turnout in India?” he mused.

“I guess they were trying to get somebody else elected,” he said. “Well, we ought to tell the Indian government.”

There is little to tell.

The Washington Post found no evidence that $21 million was due to be spent for voter turnout in India or for any other purpose. Three people with knowledge of regional aid programs, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation, expressed bewilderment over the claim – and concern that it would energize efforts by India’s right-wing government to further weaken civil society.

Randhir Jaiswal, spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, called the reports “very deeply troubling” at his weekly news conference Friday. “Relevant departments and agencies are looking into this matter,” he added.

DOGE declined to comment for this story. The White House and State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The controversy, which erupted less than a week after Modi met with Trump at the White House, was another example of the global chaos wrought by Musk, as the billionaire and a small group of aides work to dramatically reduce the size and stature of the federal government. Central to their efforts – outlined in Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order putting a 90-day pause on foreign aid – is a campaign to eliminate overseas programs the administration deems wasteful or contrary to American values.

The claim about India was included in a lengthy Feb. 15 DOGE post on X, listing what it said added up to $729 million in canceled foreign grants for a variety of causes, in countries ranging from Serbia to Cambodia.

The alleged $21 million to be spent in India was mentioned as part of a larger $486 million payment to the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS) – a USAID-funded consortium of nonprofits “dedicated to advancing and supporting democratic practices and institutions” in more than 140 countries since 1995, according to an archived version of its website, taken down soon after Trump took office.

There is no record of a CEPPS program matching DOGE’s description in India, according to people familiar with the organization’s work. CEPPS did have a $21 million USAID contract – not for India, but for neighboring Bangladesh.

“It seems that they are conflating numbers from other programs,” said a U.S. official with knowledge of the aid programs.

“We don’t know anything about elections in India because we have never been involved,” said a person familiar with CEPPS’s work. “We were all shocked to see that claim from DOGE.”

The erroneous claim dovetailed with a long-running BJP narrative that foreign actors, including the United States, have worked to undermine Modi’s government and interfere in domestic affairs. On X and other social platforms, some of the prime minister’s far-right supporters have spread conspiracy theories about the involvement of philanthropist George Soros and the “deep state” – mirroring language used by Trump and his political allies.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a former minister under Modi, responded to the DOGE post by calling for an investigation into the “money trail in India,” using the hashtag #ExposeTheTraitors. Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of Modi’s economic advisory council, called USAID the “biggest scam in human history.”

To bolster their claims of foreign interference, BJP leaders and pro-government media pointed to a 2012 agreement between India’s Election Commission and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), one of three organizations that make up CEPPS.

Amit Malviya, the BJP’s head of information and technology, accused India’s previous opposition-led government of “handing over the entire Election Commission of India to foreign operators.”

But that, too, was misleading. IFES was contracted by India’s Election Commission to develop a curriculum on election management, according to a person familiar with the terms of the agreement.

“It was really boring work,” the person said. “And ultimately the Election Commission of India approved every single line of the curriculum IFES designed.”

The IFES course material has been used by India not for its own elections, but to train electoral officials from around the world. On its website, the Election Commission boasts of having trained 69,362 election officials from 109 countries.

“ECI has always championed the need for international cooperation among democracies,” the commission’s website reads.

A Post review of public documents shows the 2012 agreement with IFES was updated as recently as August 2020 – at the behest of Indian officials chosen by Modi’s administration.

S.Y. Quraishi, who initiated the collaboration with IFES and set up the training institute as India’s chief election commissioner between 2010 and 2012, said in a statement that the accusations circulating in India were “completely false and malicious.”

But the damage may already be done. Experts say India’s depleted civil society – which has been a prime target of the Indian government throughout Modi’s years in power – is likely to face even more state pressure, including stricter rules on receiving support from abroad.

“Foreign funding rules are used as a vindictive tool to crush dissent and voices critical of the regime,” said Joe Athialy, executive director of the New Delhi-based Center for Financial Accountability.

Human rights activist Harsh Mander, whom the Indian government has been investigating for money laundering since 2021, said the Trump administration was giving Modi “carte blanche” to go after civil society, which he called India’s “last frontier of resistance.”

“The enfeebling of independent citizen voices within each of our countries is a collective project of the far right,” said the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize nominee. “It is a collective project stretching from Budapest to Washington, D.C., to New Delhi.”

Westfall reported from Washington. John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.