National News

“Cultural genocide of Hindus”: As Centre mulls relaxing FCRA norms for NGOs, LRO writes to Amit Shah against move

April 29, 2021
The Commune

In an unprecedented move that will open India to more Christian missionary and evangelical organisations, the Centre might relax the Foreign Currency Regulation Act (FCRA) norms in the coming days.

According to a report by The Economic Times, several non-profit and philanthropic groups are extending support to Covid-19 patients in India to ease the burden on hospitals and the nation’s healthcare infrastructure. News of a likely relaxation comes a week after the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) had recommended the State Department to redesignate India as a “country of particular concern” (CPC), alleging that there are “systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations” in the country.

In a bid to strengthen such non-profit organisations (NGOs), the government is likely to temporarily waive provisions of the FCRA, the report said.

This will reportedly help the country’s NGOs utilise foreign funding and donations to help Covid-19 patients during the nationwide public health emergency. Quoting an official, the report said NGOs had been requesting the home ministry for such a waiver for the last six months.

It is to be noted that the Ministry of Home Affairs is responsible for the grant and renewal of FCRA licences. The FCRA rules are likely to be relaxed for NGOs after May 31 when NGOs apply for licence renewal, added the report.

The FCRA rule was amended by the Centre, and it had come into effect from September 2020. It empowered the Centre to hold a “summary inquiry” and order a “violator” not to use foreign funding. The report noted that this rule was earlier applicable to an association that was found guilty of violating the FCRA act.

According to the ET report, the relaxation of FCRA rules will help NGOs and other philanthropic organisations utilise foreign funding and donations for ramping up the supply of critical healthcare equipment to help Covid-19 patients who have failed to get treatment at hospitals.

The additional funds will help smaller NGOs and organisations provide better treatment and healthcare facilities to Covid-19 patients in rural areas, where the health infrastructure is weaker than urban areas.

However, the amended FCRA rules had resulted in some curbs on the funding received by several Christian NGOs running missionary activities in the country. Any relaxation in the rules is likely to lead to increased activity by these NGOs. Recently, Christian NGOs had claimed that they had converted more than one lakh Indians during the pandemic.

The Legal Rights Observatory (LRO), in a recent tweet, said that it has written to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and made a counter-representation to the Centre, advising that any restrictions on the FCRA not be removed. Any loosening of the FCRA would be tantamount to “cultural genocide”, LRO tweeted.

The LRO had also pointed out that NGOs “with dubious background” had urged NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant to write to Home Minister Amit Shah to ease the stringent FCRA norms. Pampering the NGOs for short-term gains would prove “suicidal”, the LRO had tweeted.

Under the amended rules, NGOs were asked to register under FCRA to open an account at a specified branch of the State Bank of India (SBI) by March 31, 2021. However, the limit of administrative expenses was reduced from 50 per cent to 20 per cent.

The rule also mandates providing the Aadhaar number of all office-bearers, directors and other key functionaries. In a scenario where a person on the NGO board is not an Indian, a copy of their passport or overseas citizen of India (OCI) card has to be provided.

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