Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) 2010 has been notified and it has come into force with effect from 1/5/2011. FCR Rules 2011 have also come into force from 1/5/2011.
Key features of FCRA 2010 include the following:
• Concept of ‘permanent’ registration done away with; A five-year registration is provided so that dorman organisations do not continue. All existing registered organisations are deemed to be on a five-year validity from now.
• ‘person’ has been defined in a broader sense
• ‘Organisations of political nature’ cannot receive foreign funds.
• Ceiling on administrative expenses has been prescribed.
• Procedure for suspension and cancellation of registration has been Prescribed.
• Statutory role provided for banking sector in regulation.
• Time limits have been provided for accountability of officials
• To deal with bona fide mistakes of NGOs, provision has been made for ‘compounding’ of offences.
Details are available on Ministry of Home Affairs website- mha.nic.in
we have FCRA HOW wE GeT FUND FROM MHRD.
very happy to know to change fcra
Please upload a copy of the gazette notification containing the text of this Act and Rules. The website of MHA is still having the old (1976) Act.
The comments of both Tyuidb and TD Sharma are worth pondering but, I am afraid, they have missed the point. The amended Act is no doubt regressive and repressive and particularly discriminatory against the ordinary native NGOs who are already starved for funds, as pointed out by both. But the amendment inter Alia stipulates that the maximum amount of foreign contributions that an Indian NGO can receive shall not exceed Rs. 1,00,000 in a year and, that too, after obtaining the impossible-to-get FCRA approval for which the minimum expenditure to be incurred indeed exceeds Rs. 10 lakhs. The problem has been compounded by the following facts:
1) Section 35CCA was withdrawn suddenly and for harassing the NGOs (in the name of streamlining tax admn.) w.e.f. 1-4-1883 and thus doing away with an easier way to collect donations;
2) The approval under Section 35AC is also beneficial to the NGOs and hence IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to even approach the high powered National Committee seeking its approval and, in any case, the Committee meets very seldom and, if at all, only under political/network pressure or the 2G-like pressure! This has been going on for ages. The only people who can approach the members of the Committee are themselves very highly influential/placed and dictate terms.
In effect, the small NGOs have to pay money for sec.12AA/80G, 35Ac and even to collect donations in an egalitarian society run by and for the rich and the powerful. Or, those who can and do get foreign funds through the HAWALA system, within the knowledge of the Govt. According to a top most Home Ministry mandarin, who care for the tiny and unknown NGOs working among the poorest who in any case need not survive at all? Very justified. After all, the legal system is entirely based on discrimination between the two distinct classes and one is always more equal than the other, the expendable nameless nobodies.
The real mystery of the amended FCRA lies much deeper.
What has been done in the new FCRA is to ensure that the small-sized NGOs operating in the remote and distant places in the country have been banned and disabled totally from receiving any foreign contributions. In any case, of course, FCRA has all along been already meant for helping the huge foreign-headquartered NGOs run in India on behalf of the foreign principals by the top bureaucrats’ family members and/or the Indian NGOs started and run by the wives and children of ministers, topmost civil servants or of those working in the concerned ministry. The smaller domestic NGOs were as it is never entertained for their inability to please the officers/staff through substantial pecuniary or “other” benefits (of flesh). [In Chennai, a very spirite Christian lady was running a school with her own limited ability by begging from peopple. She applied for FCRA recognition in the 1990s. An officer from MHA came down from Delhi (naturally on a private trip to “enjoy”) and called the lady on phone to see him in his (5-star) hotel after 7 PM! The message was so clear that the self-respecting lady never went and her application was rejected for the 3rd time, as usual.]
The present amended version of the FCRA has now banned the small NGOs from applying for the impossible-to-obtain-as-ever-approval by introducing the requirement that the funds receivable from abroad/NRIs must exceed $1,00,000 for the NRI to be eligible to apply for the FCRA recognition. Thus, the smaller NRIs also have been debarred from remitting donations for their village schools or town college fund or a charitable organization engaged in spreading education among the BPL or the below-BPL humans!
This is true democracy and the true character of the heartless Indian bureaucracy devoid of and divorced from the ground realities of actual conditions of life of the ordinary Indian mortals and the do-gooders!
Congratulations to them.
Notwithstandinfg this, obtaining the FCRA approval by the ordinary charitable societies and NGOs will still cost crores and unending time, if ever granted, unless top bureaucrats wives, children, and friends are involved in the control of the NGOs. That is why, while all the high profile foreign and Indian NGOs get tjhese approvals (like s. 35AC under the IT Act) in no time, whereas applications under FCRA from the ordinary NGOs are rejected forthwith (by visiting the offices and trying to “deal” which they can ill afford). For 35AC of the Income tax act also, unless payment is made there can never be any approval, not even any rejection letter-the applications remain pending for decades and in hundreds! So, call it any name or amend it in any manner, the situation will remain unchanged-mam may come and man may go, but the corrupt and dishonest go on for ever. No number of RTI Applications will ever bring about any deliverance-for there is no answerability.