The Hindu : National : Nod for law on foreign contributions

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Saturday, Nov 11, 2006
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National

Nod for law on foreign contributions

P. Sunderarajan

NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal to repeal the Foreign Contributions (Regulation) Act and in its place bring in a new legislation under which any organisation of a political nature would be debarred from receiving money from abroad.

The new law would debar associations or companies engaged in production or broadcast of audio news or audio-visual news or current affair programmes from receiving monetary contributions from abroad. The ban would cover owners, editors, correspondents, cartoonists and columnists of such associations and companies.

The legislation would also prescribe that only up to 50 per cent of the foreign contributions could be used for administrative expenses and specify the purposes for which foreign contributions could be accepted as also the sources from which they could be got. Besides, it would specify persons who can receive foreign contributions.

Among other things, it would have a provision for sharing with security agencies information of contributions received through banking channels if the amounts exceeded a certain limit or if there were any suspicion about the transactions and would ban use of foreign contributions or incomes arising out of them for speculative business.

Under the new legislation, amounts received by any foreign source by way of fee or payment in lieu of certain services would be excluded from the definition of foreign contribution. It would also allow utilisation of contributions through more than one bank account.

Chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Cabinet also gave its nod for a social security agreement with Belgium under which Indian workers and self-employed Indians in Belgium would be entitled to export their social security benefits to India on their relocation to India.

In addition, for short-term contracts up to five years, no social security contributions would need to be paid under the Belgium law by the detached workers provided they continue to make social security payments in India. The agreement would be applicable to even those employees sent by Indian companies to Belgium from a third country.

Model for pacts

Announcing the Cabinet decisions, Union Finance Minister and Cabinet spokesperson P. Chidambaram said India would enter into such pacts with other countries too in due course. Since this was the first one, it would serve as a model for pacts with others.

The Cabinet also approved a proposal to increase the basic pension of freedom fighters and the basic dependent family pension of spouses of deceased freedom fighters by Rs. 2,330 a month with retrospective effect from October 2.

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