FCRA amendment Bill has been now passed by both the Houses of Parliament which can be considered as one of the most historic steps taken by the Namo Govt which in the forthcoming years would prove to be very substantive and instrumental in curbing down the money laundering, illegal foreign funds coming in India for the purpose of promoting nefarious activities in India. The thrust of this Amendment bill also puts an emphasis on scrutinizing the functioning of all the NGOs who in the name of providing social service to the Society get indulge in creating a rift between the religious groups or some other anti-national operations and thus act as a proxy for our enemy’s nation.

FCRA amendment bill aims at ensuring the strict regulation of Foreign donations so that the internal stability of India doesn’t get affected, FCRA is applicable on all groups, associations, NGO which receive foreign aids, it is made compulsory that the NGO must register themselves under the FCRA, the registration would expire after 5 years and then the NGO would have to again register in FCRA within 6 months of old registration expiration. As per FCRA election candidates, editors, or publishers of the newspaper, government employees, public servants are forbidden from taking foreign funds. Adahar card during the time of registration has been made necessary by the govt, therefore NGO will have to provide adhar card of all the staff working under it, if anyone from the staff is a foreigner then he must provide a copy of the passport or overseas identification card. The bank account for NGO to get the foreign contribution will be designated by the SBI, New Delhi as FCRA account and no funds other than foreign funds can be deposited in that bank account. However, the person may open another FCRA account in any bank of its choice for the purpose of effective utilization of foreign funds. FCRA also focusses on the reduction of administrative expenditure of NGO from 50% to 20% so that a large sum of money would get devoted to their ultimate respective goal. Govt has also given the right to do inquiry of the NGO so that they can check that the person filing the application is fake or real or whether that person has been prosecuted or convicted for creating communal tensions or dong religious conversions, has not been found guilty of diversion or mishandling of funds, the govt also allows the person to surrender their registration certificate only when he/she is not found infringing the provisions of the laws. if the govt founds any NGO in violating any guidelines then that NGO can be suspended for nearly 1 year by the Govt.

The salient features of the FCRA bill reflects the Govt concerns over the suspicion of the foreign funds arriving in India for creating lawlessness and chaos in the nation since most of the foreign funds are directed in religious conversions of Hindus by the NGOs, mostly Christian missionaries get huge funds from European nations for furthering their propaganda such as bribing the politicians not to carry out any developmental activities or oppose it in the name of environmental protection, similarly, they buy journalist also for criticizing their govt development plans, this money is also used in provoking riots or buying of weapons illegally which was disastrous for India’s security, Congress and other parties have opposed this bill during voting in the parliament as they believe it would make the working of NGO even tougher and several other organization have also criticized the FCRA bill as from their viewpoint it is not in accordance to the international law and global norms, the mischievous activities through NGO would be curtailed to a large extent and the bill has been able to address the problem of internal instability in India caused by these foreign funds, it would also act as a death knell for the Maoist and Naxal operations in Eastern part of India who target our security forces by getting arms and ammunitions from these funds, most of the protest launched against govt are also engineered from behind the scene by NGO so it would also dampen very effectively these activities, our former union cabinet minister Chidambaram once said in the parliament that govt has no clue where the most of the foreign funds go, now the present regime is eager to stop these foreign contribution as they have realized where it goes, the outcomes of these FCRA bill will be visible in the upcoming years and then the citizens and many critics would acknowledge this bold and decisive step taken by the govt.

DISCLAIMER: The author is solely responsible for the views expressed in this article. The author carries the responsibility for citing and/or licensing of images utilized within the text.