23 members of the European parliament landed in Srinagar on the 29th of October to visit Kashmir, questions about the impromptu guests of India started flying around. The visit was neither initiated by the European Government nor the parliamentarians were invited by the Indian government.
According to a member of the Liberal Democratic Party in the United Kingdom, the meeting was organized by the International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies. However, Sreenivasan Jain revealed in a tweet that the invitation was sent by a woman named Madi Sharma.
Madi Sharma has claimed to be writing the letter on behalf of the Women’s Economic and Social Think Tank. Her invitation talked about“a prestigious VIP meeting with the Prime Minister of India, His Excellency Narendra Modi”. The letter entailed the details of the visit as “The meeting with the Prime Minister is scheduled for the 28th of October, with a visit to Kashmir on 29th and a press conference on 30th.”
The connection with the International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies is the institute’s mention in the letter as the trip’s sponsor.
International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies
The International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies, founded by Dr. Govind Narain Srivastava in 1980, claims to have “provided a platform to voice the viewpoint of billions of people of the third world” on its website as their mission statement.
The website has its founder’s name under the leaders' section of the website, weirdly enough having existed for several decades, it is the only name as a leader on the website. Dr. Govind had also started the newspaper, New Delhi Times which apparently has a wide global reach. Dr. Govind died in 1999.
The institute has recently established a Human Rights center that covers “rights of minorities and ethnic groups”, “rights of the women and child”, sustainable development, “right to life, Democracy and Human Rights”.
Apart from five regional offices, the institute has offices in New York, Geneva and Vienna that supposedly coordinates with the United Nations. The governing body of the Institute, the website says, consists of “parliamentarians, academicians, experts, diplomats and media persons”.
Madi Sharma
Madi Sharma, the woman who sent out invitations to the EU MPs. Madi has written for the New Delhi Times with the byline ‘EU Correspondent’. She has written on various international issues and trade policies, her bylines for the newspaper also read “Founder, Women’s Economic and Social Think Tank (WESTT)”.
The Women’s Economic Forum’s website describes Madi Sharma as “International Business Broker, Education Entrepreneur; speaker” and the leader of the Madi group. Madi’s Women’s Economic and Social Think Tank is a part of the Madi group conglomerate, “international private and social enterprises and NGOs”.
It claims to be “a leading women’s think tank with global dimensions, focussing on the economic, environmental and social development of women. At a political level it is also lobbies to raise awareness on key issues but never for commercial gain”.
