YSR Congress party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s meeting with Telugu NRIs at Dallas on August 17, the first one after becoming the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, was a big success, despite some hiccups in the organization.
It generated a lot of euphoria among the Telugu people in the US, who attended the meeting in large numbers. And Jagan’s speech received tremendous ovation from the crowds.
Naturally, the success of Jagan’s meet has made the “yellow batches” among the NRIs go green with envy.
They started circulating a talk saying that the organisations like NATS, NATA, ATA etc, which conducted the meeting in the honour of Jagan had evaded tax to the US government, as a lot of money was collected for a “political event.”
Some members of these groups have even written to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a US department responsible for collection of taxes as per the federal statutory tax laws, complaining about the event hosted for Jagan.
According to the complaint, the organisations were directly involved in a political activity by hosting the meeting of Jagan in the US.
“Being non-profit organisations, they are barred from hosting or being part of a political event. Yet, the heads of these organisations were shown as official hosts for the event,” it said.
The complainants further said though these American Telugu associations were not supposed to send material promoting a particular political event, they had done it by sending e-mails to their members at regular intervals.
“The event itself has incurred an expenditure of roughly 350,000 dollars and we are sure of the sources of expenditure of the finances,” they said.
According to them, Jagan’s meeting was not an official event organized by the Government of Andhra Pradesh and even if it is, the organisers not expected to be part of the hosts of the event.
“It does not help the organisations and their objectives, but might only benefit individuals heading their organisations,” the complainants said.
They also sought to project Andhra Pradesh chief minister in a bad light.
“Even though the chief guest is the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, he is currently accused in financial irregularities and was jailed for the same,” they argued.
It is very clear from the complaint that these people could not tolerate the popularity of Jagan among the Telugu NRIs in the US.
It would have been better in what capacity they had hosted similar events in the US during the visit of Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu or other TDP leaders in the past for TANA meetings!