SONAL SHAH'S APPOINTMENT TO OBAMA TEAM EVOKES PROTEST

While the fast growing Indian American community took pride in the appointment of Sonal Shah as a leader of US President-elect Barack Obama's key policy working group, thousands of secular Indian groups in the U.S have protested about her alleged links with radical Hindu groups.

In naming Shah to head a policy group, the President-elect has seemingly not heeded to the Leftist activists in the U.S who loudly protested her inclusion in the Obama transition team, ostensibly because of her family's connections in India to the RSS and the VHP. Shah is one of nine leaders who heads seven Policy Working Groups tasked with ''developing priority policy proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration,'' the transition team announced. Shah will cochair the Technology, Innovation and Government Reform panel along with Julius Genachowski and Blair Levin.

Other panels, all of which will be headed by a single person, are as follows: Economic: Daniel K. Tarullo, Education: Linda Darling- Hammond, Energy and Environment: Carol M. Browner, Health Care: Senator Tom Daschle, Immigration: T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar National Security: James B. Steinberg, Dr. Susan E. Rice.
Indian Christian Forum (ICF) an umbrella organization for Indian American Christians in US that promotes human rights and religious freedom in India expressed its grave concern to President-elect Obama on the appointment of Sonal Shah as a member of his transition team.

According to Thomas T. Oommen, President of ICF "While Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) also known as World Hindu Council is currently engaged in killing innocent people and ethnically cleansing Christians from Khandamal District in Orissa, India, it is quite ironic that one of their own past National Coordinators is assuming an important role in the new administration which promised a new emphasis on Human Rights referring to Shah's appointment to the transition team.

Shah responded with a statement that her ''personal politics have nothing in common with the views espoused by VHP, RSS, or any such organization,'' and she has always ''condemned any politics of division, of ethnic or religious hatred, of violence and intimidation as a political tool.''

Shah, who was named the 'Person of the Year 2003' by 'India Abroad' publication, currently works for Google.org on their Global Development team, where she is engaged in defining their global development strategy and promoting the firm's philanthropy work. Prior to joining Google, she was Vice President at Goldman, Sachs and Co. and developed and implemented its environmental strategy. She has also served as the Associate Director for Economic and National Security Policy at the Centre for American Progress, where she worked on trade, outsourcing and post-conflict reconstruction issues.

In the past, she also worked with the Department of Treasury on various economic issues and regions of the world. Shah is the co-founder of the US-based non-profit organization Indicorps, which offers one-year fellowships for Indian-origin Americans to work on specific development projects in India. Her father moved from Gujarat to New York in 1970 and she along with her sister and mother joined him in 1972.