In March, Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai told the Rajya Sabha that the registration certificates of 1,827 non-profits to receive foreign contributions had been cancelled between 2018 and 2022.
For non-profits in India to receive foreign funds, they must to be registered under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, or FCRA.
Rai, who was responding to a question in Parliament on March 15, said the registration certificates were cancelled “due to violation of the provisions of the Act and rules”.
A day later, director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative Venkatesh Nayak filed a right to information application seeking access to all 1,827 cancellation orders. He asked the Ministry of Home Affairs to upload them on the FCRA website and share the URLs with him.
But the ministry did not disclose this information. Instead, it told Nayak that details of the 1,808 organisations whose foreign contribution licences had been cancelled since 2018 were available on the FCRA website.
The website, however, had only one order from October 2019 cancelling the FCRA certificates and listing the 1,808 organisations. There are no detailed cancellation orders for every organisation that has lost its FCRA licence, as sought by Nayak.
The ministry’s refusal to disclose cancellation orders comes amid a government crackdown on non-profits, think tanks…
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