The Union Home Ministry has suspended the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licence of the autonomous think tank Centre for Equity Studies (CES). The Ministry said that CES co-founder activist-author Harsh Mander, a columnist for various publications, violated the provisions of the Act. With its FCRA licence suspended for 180 days, CES will be unable to get fresh foreign contributions or utilise the existing donations without clearance from the Home Ministry.
Section 3(1)(b) of the FCRA states that no foreign contribution shall be accepted by any correspondent, columnist, cartoonist, editor, owner, printer or publisher of a registered newspaper. The publications listed by the Home Ministry’s order issued on June 14 include The Indian Express, The Hindu, The Wire, the Hindustan Times, The Quint, and Scroll.
Scroll quoted the order as saying, “Harsh Mander, trustee, has accepted foreign contribution amounting to Rs 12,64,671 during the financial year 2011-’12 to 2017-’18 as professional receipts/ payments from the FCRA account of the association [Centre for Equity Studies] … This is in violation of Sections 3 and 8 of the Act and conditions of registration under Section 12(4)(a)(vi) of the Act.”
Section 8 states that any foreign contribution received under the Act shall be utilised only for the purposes for which the contribution has been received. Section 12(4)(a)(vi) says that a person registered under the Act should not use the foreign contribution for personal gains or divert it for undesirable purposes.
The order further cited the report Labouring Lives: Hunger and Despair Amid Lockdown (2020) to say that CES used its foreign contributions to publish reports written by non-FCRA associations. The report was produced jointly by Delhi Research Group and Karwan-E-Mohabbat, a campaign for survivors of hate crimes run by Harsh, with the support of the German foundation Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
The Home Ministry rationalised this with the argument that “Utilisation of foreign contribution for such purposes is likely to prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India.”
Reacting to the suspension of the FCRA licence, Harsh told The Wire that it is “a direct attack on the principles of freedom of expression and freedom to dissent – far from being in the interest of the nation and its sovereignty as the government is trying to project.” He said that the government’s action stifled dissent, saying, “It suggests on the one hand that to speak up for justice, equality, fraternity – indeed in defence of the Constitution – is to act against the nation. And that if you work for an organisation that received foreign funds and you receive any remuneration, you are barred from writing a column or article. The question, therefore, is of the fundamental right of conscience, of the freedom to dissent.”
Harsh Mander has been on the radar of central agencies for a while now. In September 2021, the Enforcement Directorate searched his home, his office at CES, and Umeed, a children’s home run by his organisation, all in Delhi, over allegations of money laundering. More recently, in March this year, a Central Bureau of Investigation probe was ordered against Aman Biradari, an NGO that Harsh heads, for alleged FCRA violations.