NEW DELHI: Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licenses of about 20,000 NGOs have been canceled by the Centre after they were found to be violating various provisions of the Act.
Following the cancellation of the FCRA licenses, these NGOs will be barred from receiving foreign funding. With the cancellation, there are only 13,000 NGOs left with valid FCRA licences across the country. The details were conveyed to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday during a review of the Foreigners Division that handles the FCRA wing, official sources said.
Among the 13,000 NGOs with valid FCRA license, about 3,000 such voluntary organisations have submitted applications for renewal and another 2000 have applied afresh, the sources said.
This besides, 300 NGOs are currently under prior permission category but not registered under the FCRA implying that each foreign grant to such entities will have to be vetted by the Ministry before receipt.
FCRA licenses of about 16 NGOs were renewed by the Ministry under the "automatic" route and all the cases were reviewed thoroughly after which 14 NGOs were put under the prior permission category and the remaining two are still being reviewed.
The review exercise for the working of the NGOs was initiated over a year back and the process is still continuing. The move to review the functioning of the NGOs was undertaken following adverse Intelligence inputs against a number of NGOs that were found to misusing foreign funding, the sources added.
Meanwhile, Singh also reviewed the functioning of the Police Division during the day.
The Minister was informed by the senior CRPF officers that the paramilitary is for the first time raising an exclusive composite tribal Battalion by recruiting male and female tribal youth from south Bastar region. This battalion has been named as Bastariya Battalion as the recruits have been drawn from Bastar region of Chhattisgarh.
The recruitment process is going on and is likely to be completed by mid of January 2017. The recruits will be joining during April 2017 for their basic training. This is also a first recruitment process, where CRPF has implemented 33 per cent reservation at the Constable level recruitment for females.
The Minister was further informed about the steps to promote the digitization campaign on cashless transactions launched by the Centre the paramilitary personnel of the CRPF, BSF, SSB, ITBP, CISF, NSG and Assam Rifles aware about the benefits of digital transactions.
Singh on his part advised the paramilitary chiefs to organize workshops up to the Battalion level in their forces so as to apprise all the force personnel and their families about benefits and different models of cashless transaction.