Open Letter 2 - To President CII

To

Dr. Naushad Forbes
Honourable President
Confederation of Indian Industry

Respected Sir,
In continuation to my yesterday's Open Letter to your goodself, this is the final part of whole episode. Final communication through mails has been pasted below for your kind consideration. You may also refer to copy of all e-mails at info@cii.in.  I still expect a rational decision from your goodself and other dignitaries at the helm of affairs at CII.

Thanks & Regards
Gurpreet Singh

.................................................................................................................................................................

Mail from Mr. Gourav Mahajan

To: All Concerned

Please note, CII J&K State Office has decided to dissociate from the Marathon, being organized by GLS Educational Society,

1.    Due to non-availability of the official permissions and other relevant documents till date, as were promised by the organizers to CII, despite several verbal requests and assurances.

2.    Due to date and venue clashing with other similar initiative, that has all relevant documents and permissions for organizing the initiative. (Permission attached for reference)

3.    Due to the existence of a series of Jammu Marathon, being consistently organized by Board of Development of Sports in India every year.

4.    Due to expected operational and security hassles of 2 events happening on the similar date and at the same venue in a small city of Jammu, which CII had intimated the team of GLS Educational Society in advance and suggested the change of date or merging the initiatives.

5.    The merger was further agreed upon by the GLS Team. However, later on it was informed that GLS had decided to go against the agreement without informing any of the stakeholders.

6.    There was no communication from CII team about any marathon being supported by State Government, Ch Laal Singh, Hon’ble Minister for Forest & Environment is a designated Patron & Chairman of Jammu Marathon, being organized by BDSI on 13 November 2016.

7.    And as there is no MoU signed between CII & GLS Educational Society.

Please consider this as an official communication that CII J&K State Office is not supporting the initiative in question, and the decision has been taken after internal discussion and approval of the CII J&K State Office Bearers. The same will be communicated to all District authorities, Office of the Hon’ble Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister and other concerned authorities.

Henceforth, the organizers are requested to remove the CII logo and all mentions of CII from all mediums with immediate effect, as there is no interest or binding on CII to support the initiative in anyway.

Regards

Gourav

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Gourav Mahajan

Head – Jammu & Kashmir State Office

Confederation of Indian Industry

Mubarak Villa
11 B/B - Gandhi Nagar Extension
Jammu-180010
Jammu & Kashmir

Phone :  +91-191-2452007
Fax :+91-191-2452006

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)

Email : gourav.mahajan@cii.in

Website : www.cii.in

My reply to Mr. Gourav Mahajan ----->

Dear Gourav,

1. Referring to Verbal communication proves to be just a blame game and nothing else. We were never asked for permission documents and we always kept u in the loop for the process going on.

2. The permission you have attached is from D C Office and they dont have any link with M A Stadium Authorities. We have the permission letters from M A Stadium and Jammu Municipal Corporation to utilise both M A Stadium and Maharaja Hari Singh Ji Park on 13th November 2016 which Mr. Sethi doesnt have. I had attached the copies yesterday.

3. So this is true that Mr. Sethi till date doesnt have any holding area to organize the event. But with your help, he successfully created a situation for us to either back up and change the date or merge with him. We choose not to merge with him. You blame that we agreed to merge with him. Did we sign any agreement? Did we give anything in writing? 

4. You never suggested any change in date but insisted on merger of both the events, qouting it as a Govt initiative. Sh. Laal Singh is the patron of Mr. Sethi's event in his personal capacity but not as the Minister. If his ministry was involved, then permissions wont have been taken by Mr. Sethi and his Trust.

5. During our first meeting, we insisted on signing of MoU between us and CII which you denied by saying that its a very tedious and time consuming process and we should consider your official email as the agreement. It was our mistake to trust you. Infact we had the trust in the name of CII and not yours. So we fell into the trap and wasted our time and money.

6. When we met Mr. Sethi at Press Club and tried to convince him to change the date as he had not made anything public, whereas we had been promoting the event from past 2 months, he denied and revealed that from past 45 days, CII Jammu guys are telling me that G L S Society's permission is still in process, so you go ahead and get it. You and Mr. Khursheed planned with him to sabotage our event and asked him to take permission for the same date and same venue as ours. When it was done, then you revealed it to us and forced us to team up with him.

7. We still have trust in CII and people like Dr. Naushad Forbes and other dignitaries at the helm of affairs of CII. Thats why we brought the matter into their kind consideration and hoped that they wont let all our efforts, time and money go for a waste. Otherwise there is no question of proceeding with you and Mr. Khursheed.

Since CII leadership also seems to be convinced with your verbal allegations and reasoning and we made a mistake to trust a confirmation e-mail from your official e-mail id as an agreement, we are left with no option but to end every kind of association with CII for this event.

It is an assurance from our side that as early as possible, we will remove CII logo and CII mentions from all our material and whatever is left on past distributed 30,000 pamphlets and over 150 t shirts distributed across J&K, Punjab & Chandigarh remain beyond our control now. It will take us a couple of days to make the necessary changes.

Thanks & Regards

Gurpreet Singh

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