The name Madi Sharma has been highlighted during the visit of the European members of Parliament to Kashmir who was responsible for sending out the invites to the EU delegation.
The profile of Madi Sharma that is shared on the internet shows that she runs an NGO called Women’s Economic and Social Think Tank (WESTT). The same think tank that conducted the trip of the Members of the European Parliament to India in collaboration with the International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies (IINS), which is supposed to have paid the expenses for the trip.
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WESTT is “a leading women’s think-tank with global dimension focussing on the economic, environmental and social development of women.
Sharma’s official bio on her Twitter handle describes her as ‘Social Capitalist: International Business Broker, Educational Entrepreneur and Speaker’.
The invitations to the MEPs seem to have been sent out by her who promised them a meeting with PM Narendra Modi and a trip to Kashmir. Members of the EU delegation met the Prime Minister, national security adviser Ajit Doval, and external affairs minister S Jaishankar in New Delhi and met Commander of 15th Corps in Srinagar.
The Madi Group, owned and run by Madi Sharma, is a network of international private sector, non-profit companies. Sharma is a member of the European Economic and Social Committee, a consultative body of the European Union.
She also wrote an article “Why demolishing Article 370 is both a victory and a challenge for Kashmiri women”. She also accompanied a similar EU delegation to Maldives last year, when it was still being run by Abdulla Yameen, where they were very critical of the Yameen government.