IN a major move, the Maharashtra government has cancelled the registration of over 5,000 defunct public trusts across the state. Over 1.3 lakh institutions have also been sent notices by the Charity Commissioner of the state.
Claiming that the deregistration move has made registration of new trusts easy, Charity Commissioner Shivkumar Dige said, “Now a new trust can be registered within a day. Over 1,500 new public trusts, too, have been registered under the new provision.”
In a meeting on Thursday, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis reviewed the deregistration process, besides the changes in the Public Trust Act, and the digitisation process of the Charity Commissioner’s Office.
“The major work in the Charity Commissioner Office is that of changes in the board of trustees.
The process needs to be easier and transparent,” he said, adding that applications for changes in the board of trustees need to be cleared rapidly and that old cases be cleared within a fortnight. Dige said his office is also working on the audit reports submitted by the trusts, and the appeals, too, are uploaded to the online system the same day.