Open Letter 1 - to the President CII

To
Dr. Naushad Forbes
Honourable President
Confederation of Indian Industry

Respected Sir
With due regards, this is to put in your kind notice that your Jammu Office had entered in an association with us for Jammu Marathon which was scheduled to be held on 13 November 2016 ( www.jammumarathon.com ) .

We have been promoting the event from past 2 months and have spent over Rs.5 Lacs in doing so. At this point, your Jammu Office people, namely Mr. Gourav and Mr. Khursheed have sent us an email to end up this association. Whole of the matter has been mentioned in my email to Mr. Gourav which I have pasted below. Copy of the same along with documents as proofs has been mailed at info@cii.in

What your jammu officials are doing is completely unethical and we see this as an attempt to sabotage our event to watch their own selfish interests. I request you to kindly look into this matter and uphold the image and name of CII.

Thanks & Regards
Gurpreet Singh


Mail to Mr. Gourav Mahajan -

Dear Gourav,

Sorry for late reply. Gurpreet here. I am still on way to Jammu. Lets not make verbal accusations and talk about facts based on proofs. Kindly note the following - 

1. There was no request from your side for the copy of Marathon Permission letter. Was there ever any mail from your side in this regard which we didnt reply? If you had any doubts, you should have put it in writing. This is your first mail we received in this regard as if you were waiting for the opportunity to say a NO for association with us.

2. If having permission documents is the only concern, give us 2-3 days. We will get permission for 13th November 2016 as promised. Since you opened the matter today, asking for 2-3 days by us is a genuine gesture.

3. Now that you have picked up the point, let me reply. We had applied for permission in January 2016, much before your other team of professionals (Mr. Amit Sethi and his trust). There was a problem at Deputy Commissioner Office that even when our application process was going on, Assistant Commissioner (General) _ ACG -  and his officials overlooked our application and considered the other application for the same date and also granted them permission. When we brought the matter to the notice of Honourable Deputy Commissioner Jammu, he ordered ACG to cancel the permission granted to your other team. But since mistake was at their end, finally DC called us and said you both organize the event on the same date. We r issuing you the permission. 

4. Since there is only a difference of 30- 50 metres between both venues and routes, we denied to organize the event on the same date keeping in view the security of our participants which will have children also and the event that other team is organizing is more of a political rally which will have thousands of people creating a complete chaos. Still if you insist and feel its safe,  we will also get the permission for 13th November 2016 itself. 

5. You ensure that Mr. Sethi has all legal formalities complete. Can you support this with a proof? Does he have any holding area where to gather and manage the  crowd? For 13th November 2016, we have the permission to utilise M A Stadium and Maharaja Hari Singh Park. Copies of permissions attached. What does Mr. Sethi have?

6. Mr. Sethi has permission to organize event outside M A Stadium, i.e., the road. Please share copy of his permission from DC Office as a proof. Will he gather crowd and make the stage on the road to block M A stadium gate for which we have the permission? Is this his complete documentation?

7. When we sent you the proposal to be a part of this event and you accepted, what were the terms and conditions decided which we violated till date?

8. During past few months of association with CII, there was not even a single penny of contribution from your side whereas we spent almost Rs.5 Lacs in promoting the event as - CII Jammu Marathon - we even promoted it across Punjab and Chandigarh by doing promo runs. All money and efforts went into creating awareness of CII Jammu Marathon and now you want us to start from scratch and create awareness about new brand and event? Who will pay for the loss of money, though nobody can pay for the loss of time and damage to our image?

9. On behalf of our team I met Mr. Sethi because when we met him at your office, yourself and Mr. Khursheed were more excited about his project than Mr. Sethi himself. You both misguided us by qouting that Mr. Sethi's event is a Government of Jammu & Kashmir event and he is their representative. Then we approached the Honourable Chief Minister of J & K and Sh. Ashok Koul, General Secratary BJP in this regard, we came to know that Government has no involvement in this event and infact there is an RSS event on 13th November itself in Jammu and Govt cant organize any event. When we had doubts on your intentions after getting confirmed that Govt was not involved, we decided to meet Mr. Sethi personally and there he admitted that government is in no way involved.

I am not talking about all this verbally, we brought this complete matter in the notice of the Chief Minister and Sh. Ashok Koul in writing. Our request letters with complete report on this issue are in their esteemed offices.

10. Yourself and Mr. Khursheed repeatedly demotivated us that we cannot even stand infront of a Government organized event and you wanted us to give up the idea of organizing 3 Km, 5 Km and 10 Km events and just go for 21 Km event and agree to all what Mr. Sethi says. We didnt want to be the part of his election rally kind of a program and give up the spirit of the marathon. Rest we dont know what personal interest you both have in joining Mr. Sethi and his event.

11. I am marking this mail to Dr. Naushad Forbes, President of CII, for his kind consideration. We want decision in this regard by CII and not by Mr. Gourav or Mr. Khursheed. We will not have any verbal communication with you. Let everything be here, very clear. 

Thanks & Regards

Gurpreet Singh