NEW DELHI: Flagging the ‘rushed proceedings’ of the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, Congress MP K C Venugopal on Thursday wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla urging his intervention in the matter, saying that a push to pass it in the Winter Session could reduce parliamentary examination to a formality.
In a letter to Birla, Venugopal said he had learnt of an intention to hasten the Bill’s passage without meaningful consultation with affected stakeholders.
“It has been learnt that no meaningful consultation with stakeholders is taking place and that there is an intention to have the Bill passed hastily in the forthcoming Winter Session.
If this is so, it would defeat the very purpose for which the House referred the Bill to the Committee, and reduce an important parliamentary process to a mere formality,” he wrote.
Venugopal, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), urged the Speaker to ensure that the JPC invites written memoranda through a public notice and hears oral evidence from all affected stakeholders. He also sought adequate time for the exercise, including an extension of the committee’s reporting deadline if necessary.
“Members must have a full opportunity for clause-by-clause deliberation, and the Bill should be taken up in the House only after the committee completes a comprehensive examination,” he said.
The letter comes days after DMK Rajya Sabha MP P Wilson questioned the seven-day window granted to the public to submit suggestions on the Bill. In a letter to committee chairman Sanjay Jaiswal on Tuesday, Wilson sought at least four weeks for responses.
The Lok Sabha Secretariat issued a statement on Monday on behalf of the committee, inviting views and suggestions on specific clauses of the Bill. Wilson said the exercise should also explicitly invite objections.
“Objections, and not merely suggestions, should be invited,” he wrote.
Flagging concerns over the proposed amendments, Venugopal said provisions extending the bar on foreign contribution to “any person” and transferring an organisation’s funds and assets to a government-designated authority upon cancellation or non-renewal of its registration had caused deep anxiety among affected institutions.
He alleged that the “relentless weaponisation” of the FCRA in recent years had led to the cancellation of thousands of licences, depriving millions of Indians of crucial assistance in healthcare, education and livelihood generation.
The Lok Sabha referred the Bill to a 31-member JPC on August 12 amid objections to its provisions, Venugopal pointed out.
“A reference to a JPC carries a clear meaning: wider consultation and deeper scrutiny,” he said, calling for NGOs, charitable institutions, religious bodies, voluntary organisations, legal experts and state governments to be heard.
Public confidence in parliamentary institutions rests on the assurance that laws affecting people’s lives are made after due deliberation, he wrote, urging the Speaker to ensure that the committee fulfils the purpose for which it was constituted.