Govt cancels FCRA licences of 20,000 NGOs for violation of laws

Delhi: The government has cancelled the FCRA licences of 20,000 NGOs out of 33,000 such organisations for violation of laws, thus barring them from receiving foreign funds. 

Now, only 13,000 NGOs in the country were now legally valid.

This was conveyed to HM Rajnath Singh during a review of the Foreigners Division of the Home Ministry here on Tuesday.

The exercise of reviewing the working of the NGOs was started about a year ago and the process is still continuing, official sources said, as per PTI.

Among the 13,000 valid NGOs, around 3,000 have submitted applications for renewal while Ministry of Home Affairs received 2,000 new applications for registration under the FCRA for the first time.

An additional 300 NGOs are currently under prior permission category but not registered under the FCRA.

However, FCRA licences of around 16 NGOs were renewed by the Home Ministry under the "automatic" route and all the cases were reviewed thoroughly and except in two cases, 14 NGOs have been put under the prior permission category while papers of the two NGOs are under examination.

As per FCRA, if an NGO is put under prior permission category, it is barred to receive foreign funding from abroad without taking permission from the Home Ministry.

On November 11, a Home Ministry official had said that as many as 1,736 NGOs, including Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, Mata Amritnandmayi Math and Church of South India Diocese of Madras, would no longer be able to receive foreign funds as they had failed to renew their FCRA registration.

The registration of the 1,736 NGOs under Foreign Contribution Regulation Act had expired after these organisations had failed to submit required documents for renewal of their licence by November 8.

Earlier, the Centre had also denied renewal of FCRA registration to 25 NGOs after they were allegedly found to be involved in anti-national activities.

(With Agency inputs)