The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on January 7 restored the FCRA registration of Missionaries of Charity (MoC), the Catholic religious congregation set up by Mother Teresa. This was done after the NGO submitted the necessary documents to the concerned department.
MHA restores FCRA registration for Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity after it submitted the necessary document to concerned department: Govt Sources
— ANI (@ANI) January 8, 2022
Earlier, MHA refused to renew the Mother Teresa-founded NGO’s licence due to some “adverse inputs”.
The MHA had earlier on December 27, 2021, refused to renew the Mother Teresa-founded NGO’s FCRA licence due to some adverse inputs. Many including the West Bengal Chief Minister had expressed outrage for allegedly freezing the bank accounts of the Kolkata based NGO, which was not correct.
“22,000 patients and employees have been left without food and medicines. While the law is paramount, humanitarian efforts must not be compromised”, she had said. The MHA had however refuted this claim saying that no accounts of the NGO were frozen. Missionaries of Charity had also clarified that they themselves had frozen its accounts after their FCRA licence was not renewed, saying that the same was not cancelled as alleged.
The MHA has now renewed the registration, making MoC eligible to receive and utilise foreign funds in its bank accounts. The Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration is mandatory to receive foreign donations.
The amendment to the Foreign Contributions (Regulation) Act, 2010 seeks to enhance transparency, accountability and to strengthen the compliance mechanism while allowing the genuine NGOs to continue working for the welfare of the society. There are around 16000 NGOs whose FCRA registration is currently active.
