New Delhi: Days after Elon Musk, who is heading the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), announced a series of expenditure cuts, including the USD 21 million allocated for “voter turnout in India”, US President Donald Trump backed him saying India “has a lot of money”.
“Why are we giving USD 21 million to India? They have got a lot of money. They are one of the highest taxing countries in the world in terms of us; we can hardly get in there because their tariffs are so high,” Trump said at a press conference in his Mar-a-Lago residence on Tuesday.
“I have a lot of respect for India and their Prime Minister, but giving USD 21 million for voter turnout – what about voter turnout here? We’ve done that, I guess. We did 500 million dollar – it’s called the lock boxes,” he said.
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Trump chose Musk to head the newly formed government department last month. It is aimed at improving governance and curbing wasteful expenditures, as per a post by DOGE on X. As part of the same, it announced cancelling a series of programmes costing hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars.
The cancelled funds included USD 486 million in grants to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening”.
Meanwhile, Trump and Musk’s move sparked political conflict in India, with leaders of the ruling BJP, Amit Malviya and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, criticising the opposition Congress, terming the grant as an “external interference in India’s electoral process”, the beneficiary of which was “not the ruling party for sure”, news agency PTI reported.
The announcement came days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official visit to the US, during which he held talks with Trump, as well as Musk.
