New Delhi: The home ministry has cancelled Delhi-based think tank Centre for Policy Research’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licence citing “violations”. The move comes 10 months after the ministry first suspended CPR’s licence.
ThePrint has verified the status of the think-tank’s FCRA licence on the ministry website.
A valid FCRA licence is essential for any non-profit organisation to receive foreign contributions. Once granted, it’s valid for five years and has to be subsequently renewed.
According to details on its website, CPR is a non-profit public policy research institution established in 1973.
The MHA had first suspended the think-tank’s FCRA license for 180 days for alleged violations in February last year. The suspension was later extended.
This came two months after the income tax department, after a tax ‘survey’ on CPR’s premises, served a show-cause notice to the think tank asking why its tax exemption under Section 12A of the 1961 Income Tax Act should not be revoked. The provision enables non-profit entities to claim full tax exemption under sections 11 and 12 of the act.
The tax exemption status was subsequently revoked in June last year.
A senior MHA official told ThePrint that organisation was asked to submit some documents when its licence was first suspended for 180 days last year. “Later, the suspension was extended and now it has been cancelled as they were found to be violating FCRA norms,” this official said.
Yamini Aiyar, president and chief executive of CPR, told ThePrint that the think tank had received a notice from the MHA about the cancellation of the FCRA licence on 10 January.
“The basis of this decision is incomprehensible and disproportionate, and some of the reasons given challenge the very basis of the functioning of a research institution. This includes the publication on our website of policy reports emanating from our research being equated with current affairs programming,” the CPR president told ThePrint in a written statement Wednesday.
Such actions, she said, have had a debilitating impact on the institution’s ability to function “by choking all sources of funding”. She added that this “has undermined the institution’s ability to pursue its well-established objective of producing high quality, globally recognised research on policy matters, which it has been recognised for over its 50 years existence”.
The CPR is among several organisations whose FCRA licences have been cancelled citing “violations”. As ThePrint reported earlier, Oxfam India Trust, an NGO working to support child education, empower women, and fight against inequality, was among the 6,000 non-government organisations whose licenses ceased to exist from 1 January, 2022, over “violations observed” in their functioning.
An MHA official had told ThePrint then that 5,789 of the nearly 6,000 organisations did not apply for a renewal “despite several reminders” while another 179 — Oxfam among them — were denied renewal, the official had added.
Also Read: Govt amends FCRA Rules, asks NGOs to declare movable & immovable assets acquired from foreign funds
Most NGOs are just a front for the Chinese Communist Party. They should be shut down & the kingpins prosecuted.