Around 1,800 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in India have been banned from accepting foreign funds for allegedly violating norms of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). Foreign contributions to India are regulated through the FCRA, 2010. Ninety NGOs in Telangana, 168 in Andhra Pradesh, 94 in Karnataka, 53 in Kerala, 217 in Tamil Nadu and eight in Pondicherry have all been called out for allegedly not complying with the foreign funding laws and are presently banned from accepting such funds.
“It has been observed that the mandatory annual returns for 2017-18 have not been uploaded on FCRA portal by some of the NGOs even after the extended date of March 31, 2019. Non-filing of annual returns is a violation of Section 18 of the Act. A final notice was issued on June 22 to the defaulters, giving them an opportunity to file within 15 days. However they failed to submit the returns,” said the order issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
Organisations which are registered under the FCRA must submit an annual income and expenditure statement on foreign funding. These organisations include both NGOs and academic and research centres. The government has struck down the NGOs for not having submitted the required statements for up to six years, even though they received repeated reminders. Submission can be done online wherein the organisations have to submit an online report along with scanned statements of income and expenses, receipts and payment balances.
In the case that an organisation has not received any foreign funds during the given time period, they are required to submit a ‘NIL’ return form.
Some of the notable organisations which have had their FCRA registration cancelled include National Institute of Virology (Maharashtra), National Geophysical Research Institute (Telangana), and Rabindranath Tagore Medical College Hospital and Research (West Bengal).
A complete state wise list of the banned organisations can be found here.