Government has canceled the licenses of around 20,000 NGOs for violating the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) provisions.
This means that these NGOs will be barred from receiving foreign funds. Now there are only 13,000 NGOs in the country are legally valid to receive foreign funds.
The cancellation of the FCRA licenses of the NGOs has been done over a period of one year.
Among the 13,000 valid NGOs, around 3,000 have submitted applications for renewal while Home Ministry received 2,000 new applications for registration under the FCRA for the first time.
An additional 300 NGOs are currently under prior permission category but not registered under the FCRA. As per FCRA, if an NGO is put under prior permission category, it is barred to receive foreign funding from abroad without taking permission from the Home Ministry.