Pratik Sinha of Alt News is known for distorting facts, dishonest journalism, and for never using public funding. Although, recently Pratik posted this tweet claiming to be short ₹6,00,000 on Alt News monthly expenses and asked the public to make donations. Upon looking at Alt News finances, which is to be made public according to Indian law, we noticed that Alt News received huge grants to fund the fraudulent Alt News.
Back in 2019, Pratik through Twitter claimed that he and Alt News depend on public donations and only work for the public or as he put it “we (Alt News and Pratik) will only be answerable to you (the public)” but is this really true? What Pratik fails to mention to “you” the public is that in 2019 he received a hefty sum of ₹1 Crore from IPSMF and ₹10 Lakhs from Infosys. When he was asked to disclose Alt News funding, Pratik said that they just received one small grant from IPSMF but it turns out to be a lie. The grants were neither small nor just one grant. Alt News and Pratik received two grants from IPSMF totaling ₹1 crore and 84 lakh.
Now that Pratik has been caught with his pants down and around his ankles, I want “you” the public to ask yourself who Pratik and Alt news is truly working for?
Here is a detailed record of their funding, they did not need public funding in the previous years because they have been awarded grants (that were not disclosed) and other income sources that are sufficient and more than easily meet their expenses. In fact, they have a surplus.
Their biggest expense is the huge salaries of their three directors Pratik Sinha, Nirjhari Sinha, and Zubair.
Visiting their website and scrolling through their “Transparency of Funding” page, a big red flag is that there is no transparency. They only have data from 2017, the year now is 2021.
They use tactics like this to misguide people and only show a ₹3 Lakh grant from Arundhati Roy’s Zindabad Trust.
The major question readers should ask right now is “Why is Alt News not transparently updating their yearly funding details/data on their website and why don’t they show the huge grants received from IPSMF and Infosys?” Their Fixed Deposit shows ₹13 Lakh in 2018 and in 2019 it shows ₹1 Crore 14 Lakh. Where did the ₹1 Crore come from? To note, Alt News is registered under the tax-free category and pays Zero rupees in taxes irrespective of their huge income.
Here is the list of donors of IPSMF from which Alt News has received huge grants. Not only Alt News, IPSMF funds many communist mouthpiece websites like The Wire and The Caravan, etc…
