Home Ministry sets one month deadline to decide on the fate of 1500 NGO registrations

To clear the pending requests from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seeking registration under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, Union home ministry launched a special drive, with the FCRA division setting itself a one-month deadline to decide on the fate of 1,500 applications.

According to the sources in the home ministry, the FCRA license requests were submitted through the manual route, date back to 2014 and 2015, before FCRA clearances were made fully online. "The NGOs had been approaching the home ministry time and again enquiring about the status of their applications," said a home ministry officer.

"Sometime around mid-August, the additional secretary of the foreigners division, which handles all FCRA dealings, asked his subordinates to ensure that the backlog of manual applications for fresh registration was cleared without further delay. They were asked to decide whether to grant or deny registration, and communicate the decision to the concerned NGOs," the officer added.

Sources told that many requests had been deemed fit for rejection, and the focus is on not making the concerned applicants wait any longer for the final decision.

An officer told ET, "There is no point in keeping them hanging. Where the decision is a 'no', the officers have been asked to immediately convey it to the applicant NGO,"

The recent suspension of four officers of the foreigners division - including a joint secretary, two under-secretaries and a section officer, the staff is pushing hard to meet the deadline, though it expires in just over a week.

A call for applications from retired assistant section officers for engagement as consultants has already been advertised by the home ministry on Tuesday to counter the manpower shortage.

Because of the renewal of FCRA license of Zakir Naik's NGO Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) through the automatic route, four officers of the foreigners division, including joint secretary G K Dwivedi, were suspended last week.

The online renewal came even as proceedings were under way to put IRF on the 'prior permission' list, which requires all foreign funding to the NGO to be approved by the home ministry. Also, the Union home ministry is mulling declaring IRF an 'unlawful organization' for allegedly spreading communal hatred and carrying out forced conversions.

(Image Credits: BCCL)