The United States government’s alleged $21 million funding “for voter turnout” was for Bangladesh, not India, The Indian Express reported on Friday citing federal spending records.

On Sunday, the Donald Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency announced that it had cancelled several international aid initiatives through the United States Agency for International Development “costing taxpayers’ dollars”.

USAID is an independent agency that is mainly responsible for administering foreign aid and development assistance on behalf of the US government. Trump had on January 24 imposed a 90-day freeze on money distributed by the organisation pending a review by the US State Department.

The list of initiatives for which funding was revoked on Sunday included $486 million in grants to the nonprofit organisation Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS), including an alleged grant of $21 million “for voter turnout” in India.

The consortium comprises three organisations – the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and The International Foundation for Electoral Systems – that support elections and political transitions globally. It is funded by the USAID Global Elections and Political Transitions Program.

The Department of Government Efficiency, led by Trump’s senior adviser and billionaire Elon Musk, has not provided further details, including the Indian entity or organisation that was allegedly meant to receive the grants.

On Friday, The Indian Express reported citing official US federal expenditure data that no CEPPS project had been funded by the USAID in India since 2008.

Every US federal grant is linked to a specific “place of performance”, or the country where it is meant to be spent.

The newspaper reported: “The only ongoing USAID grant to CEPPS matching the denomination of $21 million and the purpose of voting was sanctioned … in July 2022 for USAID’s Amar Vote Amar (My Vote is Mine). This is a project in Bangladesh.”

The grant was meant to run for three years until July 2025.

Of the $21 million, $13.4 million has already been disbursed apparently for “political and civic engagement” among students in Bangladesh ahead of the January 2024 general election and other programmes, The Indian Express reported.

Sheikh Hasina, who resigned as the Bangladeshi prime minister and fled to India in August after 16 years in power, was re-elected in the January 2024 polls. The United States had said at the time that the polls were “not free and fair”.

Hasina was ousted after several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her Awami League government.

In November 2022, the purpose of the United States’ funding was changed to “USAID’s Nagorik (Citizen) Program”, the newspaper reported.

The grant was confirmed by a Dhaka-based USAID political processes adviser on social media in December 2024 while on a visit to the National Democratic Institute office in Washington, saying: “The USAID-funded $21 million CEPPS/Nagorik project… which I manage.”

While The International Foundation for Electoral Systems declined to comment when contacted by The Indian Express, the queries sent to National Democratic Institute and The International Republican Institute by the newspaper had not been answered.

The Indian Express quoted social media posts by the Micro Governance Research programme at the University of Dhaka and the programme’s director Associate Professor Aynul Islam as showing how the grants had been used.

One posts said that 544 youth events had been organised in Bangladeshi universities since September 2022 “to promote youth democratic leadership and civic engagement that directly reached 10,264 university youth through 221 action projects and 170 democracy sessions, among others!” the newspaper reported.

Islam told the newspaper that USAID had provided the grants to the Nagorik programme through CEPPS.

Trump’s claims

On Wednesday, President Trump said he “guessed” that the previous administration was “trying to get somebody else elected” in India by having allegedly provided $21 million “for voter turnout”.

“What do we need to spend $21 million on voter turnout in India?” Trump asked at an event in Miami. “I guess they were trying to get somebody else elected.”

He added: “We need to tell the Indian government because when we hear that Russia was trying to spend two dollars in our country, it was a big deal, right? They [Russia] took some internet ads for 2,000 dollars. This is a total breakthrough.”

Trump did not mention when the alleged disbursement of funds took place and did not provide evidence to back his claims.

The comment by Trump came a day after he defended his administration’s decision to cancel the funds allegedly being provided by USAID for “voter turnout” in India.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party claimed on Thursday that Trump’s comment had “confirmed” foreign attempts to influence the Indian electoral processes.

“[Trump’s claim] is a reaffirmation of Prime Minister Modi’s assertion during the 2024 campaign that foreign powers were trying to stop him from coming to power…” the BJP’s publicity chief Amit Malviya said on social media.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had “aligned himself with global networks seeking to undermine India’s strategic and geopolitical interests, acting as a tool for foreign agencies,” Malviya claimed.

The Congress dismissed Trump’s remarks, calling them “nonsensical”. The Opposition party demanded a white paper on USAID’s financial support to government and non-governmental organisations in India.

The Indian government has not commented on the allegations so far.

‘Express article misrepresents reference to funding’: BJP leader

Later on Friday, Malviya also claimed that The Indian Express article misrepresented the reference to the $21 million funding to promote “voter turnout” in India.

In a post on X, he alleged: “What [The] Indian Express conveniently sidesteps is the 2012 Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Election Commission of India – under the leadership of SY Quraishi – and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, an organisation linked to George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, which is primarily funded by USAID.”

The BJP leader was referring to a memorandum of understanding signed between the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and the Election Commission on May 17, 2012.

This agreement was to make “available the knowledge and experience of ECI to election managers and practitioners around the world through Commission’s India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management,” The Indian Express cited a press note from the poll panel as saying at the time.

The ruling BJP has repeatedly claimed that the Opposition Congress has conspired with Soros, a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist, to destabilise the Narendra Modi government.

On Sunday too, Malviya referred to the memorandum of understanding and called the $21 million in funding to CEPPS an “external interference” in the election process in India and asked who was its beneficiary.

On the same day, Quraishi, who was the chief election commissioner between from July 2010 to June 2012, rejected Malviya’s allegations that funding from USAID was used to help increase vote turnout when he held the post.

Quraishi said that there was a memorandum of understanding signed with The International Foundation for Electoral Systems in 2012 “like we had with many other agencies and Election Management Bodies to facilitate training for desirous countries at ECI’s training and resource centre, IIIDEM [India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management], which was very new at that stage”.

He added that there was “no financing or even promise of finance involved in MoU, forget X or Y amount”. The agreement “made it clear in black and white” that there would be no financial or legal obligation of any kind by either side, Quraishi said.

On Friday, Malviya also claimed that The Indian Express’ report was silent on subsequent USAID funding, beginning in 2014, under various categories aimed at interfering in India’s election process.

“Details of this funding were once available through annual filings on the now-defunct website of the CEPPS,” he said. “CEPPS is a subset of IFES, which collaborates with USAID, the US State Department, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, and others.”

The BJP leader added: “It is becoming increasingly clear that the [previous] Congress-led UPA [United Progressive Alliance government] systematically enabled the infiltration of India’s institutions by forces working against the nation’s interests – those who seek to weaken India at every opportunity.”

Also read: Former poll commissioner rejects claims that US agency funded ‘voter turnout’ in India