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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Foreign Funding: Listing us among barred NGOs a mistake, say top institutes -Ruhi Tewari & Vijaita Singh

Foreign Funding: Listing us among barred NGOs a mistake, say top institutes -Ruhi Tewari & Vijaita Singh

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published Published on Jun 13, 2015   modified Modified on Jun 13, 2015
-The Indian Express

A few days after the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) barred several organisations, including some top educational institutions, from receiving foreign funds, some of them hit back at the Centre on Friday saying the government made a “gross mistake” by including them in the list of NGOs receiving foreign funds.

Educational institutions like IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Delhi, Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Panjab University were among those barred by the MHA recently.

“There is some mistake… As statutory bodies created by an Act of Parliament and audited by Comptroller and Auditor General, we are exempted from FCRA norms… They had issued a notice to us in January this year and we had replied stating this. We will write to them again. If there has been a mistake, we expect there would be a correction. We are unhappy with this,” said Partha Pratin Chakraborty, Director, IIT-Kharagpur.


“We have not received any such letter from the Home Ministry. There is nothing of that kind. Even otherwise, all educational institutions which are statutory bodies created by a central or state Act and audited by CAG are exempted from provisions of Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA),” said Malay Neerav, joint dean and media coordinator of Delhi University.

Meanwhile, MHA officials said the decision to cancel the licence of 4,470 NGOs was taken purely on “administrative grounds” and they were coming up with simplified annual return forms for NGOs and organisations.

After the amended FCRA regulations came into existence in 2010, at least 45,000 NGOs were given a five-year licence to receive foreign funds on the ground that they would submit annual returns and proper audit records.

“The amended Act came into effect in 2010. But the gazette notification exempting them came into existence only in July 2011. So, for one year, they did not file annual returns. Their FCRA registration was cancelled because of this,” said a Home Ministry official.
However, some institutions claimed they never received foreign funding. A senior Delhi University official said the university does not receive any foreign funding and is “100 per cent UGC-funded”.

“Those NGOs who did not receive any foreign donations might also have got a notice from the MHA. They simply have to file annual returns saying nil donations. However, if they don’t do so, notices will be sent and licences cancelled. Many organisations are ignorant about the rules,” said the official.

Panjab University, a public autonomous university, also denied any non-compliance. “Late last year, we received a notice from the government for not declaring our foreign funding to which we replied that we did not receive any such funding for three years,” said Vineet Punia, Director (Public Relations) of the university.

Meanwhile, Poonam Kudaisya, Public Relations Officer of JNU, denied having received any such notice or information from the government.

The Indian Express, 13 June, 2015, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/foreign-funding-listing-us-among-barred-ngos-a-mistake-say-top-institutes/


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