Govt alleges Greenpeace has grand anti-India plan

NEW DELHI: Union home ministry has alleged that non-governmental organisation Greenpeace had formulated a three-pronged strategy under what it termed as its grand India plan against coal-based thermal power plants.

The strategy involved — creating a network of anti-coal protest movements, targeting coal block allocations with regulators and in courts or tribunals and campaign against domestic and foreign investors against government owned Coal India Limited.

The Centre on Thursday barred Greenpeace India from receiving foreign funding alleging that it was working against economic interest of the country. Greenpeace India termed it a smear campaign and said it will continue with its activities. Greenpeace is taking legal opinion in order to challenge the order. The ministry’s inspection report on Greenpeace India’s activities says the outfit participated in a conference’ in Istanbul in July 2012 to discuss international funding to encourage people-centric protests in India to stop new coal plants and close the older ones.

The report says at the conference, US based Climate Works Foundation (CWF) and World Resources Institute presented a paper which said in 2012 out of 999 proposed thermal plants around 455 were in India.

“They resolved to focus on Singruali region in India. CWF has since provided `1.4 crore toGreenpeace India,” says the report.