Lobbying contract terminated by the RSS or the US firm?

US lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs, in filings to the US Congress claims to have terminated its contract with the RSS on 29 December 2025 and maintains that it is now hired by one Vivek Sharma from Massachusetts to familiarise US lawmakers about the ideological mentor of the BJP in the US.

The revised filings are clearly a damage-control step by the RSS, which is an unregistered body in India, and which is neither ‘a Society, a Trust, an NGO or a Company’. It is described as a ‘body of individuals’ under the Income Tax Act for tax purposes, although it is not known to pay taxes. Why did it have to hire a lobbying firm in the US and how did it pay for the services?

RSS has variously described itself as a cultural organisation, a charitable institution, an educational institution and a political organisation at different times. It releases no annual report, submits no returns to the government and pays no tax because it claims it does not earn any profit.

Donations to the RSS remain opaque and are not audited, which is why reports that it had engaged an American firm to lobby for it in the US generated considerable controversy in November 2025. The contract remained a secret till November when news outlet Prismreports.org revealed details disclosed by the firm under US regulations.

Historian Audrey Truschke on Friday, 30 January posted on X the following questions after news broke out that the firm was no longer engaged by the RSS. “How did the RSS pay for this? Why didn't the U.S. firm register under FARA? Why is the firm still evading legal requirements? Why did they email me,” wondered Truschke referring to reports in November that in the first three quarters of 2025 the firm had been paid $330,000 or Rupees three crore for lobbying on behalf of the RSS.

The report had caused an uproar because the RSS had made no disclosure about the payment and how it was paid. The Congress on 13 November pointed out that the same US firm was also lobbying for Pakistan. It accused the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of hiring “one of Pakistan’s official lobbying arms” to advance its interests in the United States.  

The RSS quickly denied the allegations. “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh works in Bharat and has not engaged any lobbying firm in United States of America,” posted Sunil Ambekar, the chief spokesperson of the RSS, on X.  A week later, however, an RSS publication Organiser contradicted Ambekar and claimed that RSS’s activities in the US were fully disclosed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA), a transparency law for activities to influence the federal government.

Questions continued to mount. If the RSS never hired the Washington DC based lobbying firm, why did the agency mail historian Audrey Truschke and claim it was hired by the RSS to influence US lawmakers?

Squire Patton Boggs lobbyist Bradford Ellison wrote to the Rutgers University–Newark history professor Truschke in an email asking to meet with her. “Our team was recently retained by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to educate lawmakers about RSS’s mission and impact, as the organization marks its centenary. This effort calls for us to develop a comprehensive understanding of RSS’s history, including historical controversies associated with the group,” the email read, reported the Prism. Both Ellison and Bob Shuster, one of the founders of another lobbying firm, visited India and RSS handles posted photographs of them attending RSS activities.

The controversy did not end there. Why did the firm fail to disclose the RSS as a ‘foreign entity’? Why did the firm register its lobbying activities for the RSS under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) of 1995 and not the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a 1938 law that requires more stringent compliance and disclosure of every meeting, emails exchanged etc?

Caught on the wrong foot, the US firm has amended its filings to the US Congress. According to the amended filing, the “ultimate client” is now listed as Vivek Sharma, based in Massachusetts in the US, and not the RSS. Sharma was identified in subsequent reports by Prism as “the executive chairman of Cohance Lifesciences. Prior to leading Cohance, Sharma spent over two decades in the pharmaceutical and financial sectors according to his professional biography on the firm’s website. In the original registration statement filed by Squire Patton Boggs in March last year, Sharma was listed as ‘an entity other than the client that contributes more than $5,000 to the lobbying activities of the registrant in a quarterly period and either participates in and/or in whole or in major part supervises or controls the registrant’s lobbying activities”.

The firm now claims that its contract with the RSS was terminated on 30 September, 2025, although the document was signed and filed on 29 December 2025 according to the report y Prism.