-The Times of India The Election Commission (EC) has asked the Union home ministry to probe the alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) by both the Congress and the BJP by receiving donations of about Rs 5 crore each from Vedanta Group subsidiaries — Sterlite Industries and Sesa Goa. Nirvachan Sadan sources told TOI that the Representation of People Act (RPA) debarred political parties from receiving contribution for a...

-Outlook The Election Commission has come across instances of suspected violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act by Congress and the BJP in their acceptance of donations from subsidiaries of multi-national firm Vedanta group. An investigation by the EC, carried out with the help of the I-T department, has found that both the parties had received about Rs 5 crore each from two subsidiaries of the Vedanta group -- Sterlite Industries and...

-The Indian Express The government has, over the past one month, prohibited 4,139 NGOs from receiving contributions from sources overseas. The largest block of NGOs who have been shackled — 794, or about 19 per cent of the total — are based in Tamil Nadu, ground zero of the NGO-led protests against the Kudankulam atomic power plant. The government has published the list of NGOs who have lost their Foreign Contribution Regulation...

The agitation against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant can be seen as a case of activism gone berserk. The high-octane drama against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) in Tamil Nadu has wound down. The seven-month-long agitation led by the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) at Idinthakarai village in Tirunelveli district, demanding the closure of the ready-to-be commissioned project, ended on March 27 when S.P. Udayakumar, PMANE convener, called off...

-The Times of India Diversion of foreign contribution by NGOs is not limited to the 12 organizations whose cases were referred for probe recently. The muck, in fact, runs much deeper with official figures showing that the government has taken action against at least 160 voluntary bodies, including referring 24 cases to CBI and seven to different state police for investigation in the past three years. Besides, 70 NGOs have been prohibited...