No clarity on why FCRA licence was revoked: CHRI

A day after the suspension of its registration under the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA), 2010, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), an NGO, alleged slack of clarity in the ministry order on ‘irregularity’. It said that the cancellation order does not mention why the NGO’s responses were unsatisfactory.

The home ministry suspended CHRI’s licence for alleged FCRA violations. It said that CHRI had not provided information on opening a bank account in February 2016, and alleged CHRI violated other provisions of FCRA. CHRI was among NGOs prominently consulted in framing the RTI Act in 2004. It continues to work in areas of social justice through legislation, transparency and police reform.

CHRI said an MHA audit team had last August inspected its books. The team’s observations were sent to CHRI on October 7 and December 7. Thereafter, MHA sent it a show-cause notice asking it to justify why its licence should not be cancelled. MHA first suspended CHRI’s licence on June 7, 2021, for 180 days and extended it by another 180 days.


“Nothing in the cancellation order indicates why MHA finds our explanation unsatisfactory, unreasonable or untenable,” CHRI said in a statement on Thursday. Venkatesh Nayak, an RTI activist who heads the NGO told ET that the response from the ministry doesn’t even talk about the option available to NGOs for seeking a revision.

CHRI said it submitted details in a project-wise manner, along with “opening and closing balance of funds as part of the receipts and payments account and the income and expenditure account” for 2018-19, in the annual report section of the FC-4 Form, which it said was uploaded online before the deadline. “Copies of these documents were enclosed along with our responses sent to the MHA.”