The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has withdrawn the permit under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) for U.K.-based NGO Save The Children’s Indian offshoot, Bal Raksha Bharat.
Save The Children is a leading child rights organisation that focuses on health, education, hunger and vulnerable children in conflicts. It is present in 116 countries. In India since 2008, Bal Raksha Bharat is spread across 16 States. Last year, it had come under the government’s radar for a fundraising campaign on malnutrition, which was objected to by the Ministry of Women and Child Development on the ground that the issue was being “vigorously pursued” by the government through its schemes.
The organisation’s request for renewal of its FCRA licence was rejected according to an order uploaded on the MHA’s website earlier this week, said multiple sources in the civil society sector. The NGO’s name also doesn’t appear in the list of organisations with valid FCRA registration displayed on the MHA’s website.
“The non-renewal of our FCRA application has come as a surprise to us. We will work with the government and are hopeful of resolving this situation at the earliest. In the meantime, we will continue to provide critical services to the community and children,” a spokesperson of Bal Raksha Bharat said in response to a query.
The NGO’s registration was valid till November 2021, but the Ministry of Home Affairs extended the validity till March 31, 2022 for NGOs, provided their renewal request had not been refused or they had applied within six months of the expiry of their registration and before the deadline of December 31, 2021. This deadline was extended multiple times and the latest deadline is September 30, 2023.
The FCRA registration is a mandatory requirement for receiving foreign funds. The government has cancelled the FCRA registration of 1,827 NGOs in the last five years, according to information given by the Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai in the Rajya Sabha in March 2023. These NGOs include Oxfam International and think-tank Centre for Policy Research.
As reported in The Hindu on December 26, 2022, the Ministry of Women and Child Development wrote to all States and Union Territories on November 2 calling a campaign by Save The Children to raise funds from the general public to tackle malnutrition among tribal children “misleading” as the issue was being “vigorously pursued” by the government through its Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 scheme. It also asked States to report such incidents involving NGOs and take “appropriate measures to expose the false information”. This letter followed another one from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights in December objecting to the depiction of vulnerable children in “deplorable conditions” for fundraising activities and warned that this amounted to a violation of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015.
