The Home Ministry on Thursday continued with its flip-flop over grant of permits to NGOs for accepting foreign funding, reversing permission given to seven more NGOs, even as a group of activists and organisations demanded the abolition of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA).
Among the NGOs that lost the FCRA permits given online earlier, was ANHAD (Act Now For Harmony and Democracy) run by social activist Shabnam Hashmi.
The latest decisions come a day after the Union Home Ministry cancelled similar renewal of FCRA licences granted to Greenpeace India, and two NGOs run by activist Teesta Setalvad. The Ministry has now claimed that these NGOs were inadvertently granted online renewal by mistake. The Ministry had also ordered the review of the renewals given to over 13,000 NGOs for accepting foreign funds.
On Thursday, the government crackdown was targeted against ANHAD, Marwar Muslim Education and Welfare Society, Gujarat-based Navsarjan Trust, Rural Development Research Centre (RDRC), Ahmedabad, and three others.
While the Marwar Muslim Education and Welfare Society works towards uplift of Muslims, the Navsarjan Trust works towards Dalits empowerment, and the RDRC is active in rural areas.
Home Ministry sources said these licences were cancelled because an enquiry found that despite them being placed under restricted list based on adverse intelligence input, their FCRA licence was renewed online.
A group of activists and organisations condemned the government’s ongoing cancellation of FCRA licences. “We unequivocally condemn the present use of the FCRA as a tool of repression by the current government. The state is following a systematic and sustained agenda of suppressing those very dissenting voices that have consistently challenged the system,” said a statement signed by Magasaysay award winner and activist Aruna Roy, author and historian Ramchandra Guha, Amnesty International’s India chapter and others.
The signatories said the FCRA is a draconian and repressive law and must be revoked. The government’s misuse of FCRA could result in globally undermining India’s reputation on human rights.
The statement said the government has been trying to malign and criminalise “those very organizations and individuals that stand for human rights and liberal values.”
They pointed out that at least 25 organisations have had their FCRA applications for renewal rejected by the government.
Shabnam Hashmi said, in a statement on behalf of ANHAD, said the organisation will not be cowed down by the “draconian measures and mortgage the definition” of national interest, nationalism and patriotism. “The present attack on us is a continuation of similar draconian measures taken during the past three years by the present government in almost every sphere of intellectual activity and freedom of expression,” Ms. Hashmi said.
She pointed out that after Mr Narendra Modi became took charge as Prime Minister, Anhad faced an enquiry by the Home Ministry in June 2014. In November 2015 the Ministry held a second enquiry, when four trunks of material was sent to them. “The scenario is like the demonetisation notices — the government can’t make up its mind what it wants to do,” Ms. Hashmi said.
