A group of former civil servants have expressed concern on the “negative” approach of the Central government over the renewal of FCRA licenses of certain non-profit organisations claiming that this “relentless harassment” amounts to cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
In a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the ‘Constitutional Conduct Group’, which professes to be without any political affiliations, said that these voluntary organisations were supplementing the government’s efforts in crucial areas of health, education, employment and human rights basically working in areas where the government’s own reach was limited or ineffective.
“The government should view them as partners and not as adversaries. Most importantly, these organisations work at the lowest levels of our society, with mostly marginalised groups who have fallen through the cracks in the government’s own welfare schemes, and have no safety net to take care of them. Deliberate denial of even this modicum of assistance or advocacy to them does not do credit to a government whose rallying cry is “sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas,” the letter said.
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The letter, which has 86 signatories, quoted media reports on the lapse of FCRA registrations of nearly 5,933 NGOs as of January 1, 2022, and expressed concern over “the very negative approach of the Government of India in renewal of FCRA licences of nonprofits engaged in different sectors in India”.
In the recent past, FCRA licences of four well-known nonprofits —Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Oxfam India, Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Centre for Equity Studies (CES) — have been cancelled or suspended.
As far as the CPR was concerned, the Income Tax Department has also cancelled its tax exemption status with effect from June 30.
The group claimed that it seemed as if using the FCRA, the Government of India was looking at deterring civil society organisations from seeking funding from foreign sources, although such access to foreign funds, through other legally sanctioned means was freely available to the private sector, digital and print media as well as political parties.
Holding that certain provisions of the FCRA were “highly flawed”, the former civil servants alleged that “restrictive and vaguely worded clauses in the FCRA have been used to act against organisations that take an independent view on economic, social and political issues, which may not be to the liking of the government”.
“The relentless harassment of voluntary organisations amounts to cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face”.
“As former civil servants closely associated during our careers with development processes at different levels of government, we would urge you to adopt a cooperative rather than an adversarial relationship with these essential components of any civilized society,” it said.
