The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has cancelled the registration of Greenpeace India. It’s been five months that the MHA  suspended Greenpeace India’s licence to receive foreign donations. The MHA states that Greenpeace India has “continued to violate FCRA norms”.The MHA had earlier said Greenpeace India “mixed foreign and domestic funds” and had “not disclosed the movement of funds properly”.

In April 2015, the MHA suspended registration of the NGO saying it had violated norms by opening five accounts to use foreign donations without informing the authorities concerned. On MHA directions, the IDBI, ICICI and Yes Bank had frozen the NGO’s accounts.

Ms. Gopal, interim co-Executive Director of Greenpeace India said the cancellation of the organisation’s FCRA registration was the “government’s latest move in a relentless onslaught against the community’s right to dissent.

Points to Note

• Since last one year, FCRA licence of at least 11,000 NGOs were cancelled by the government for violating various provisions of FCRA.
• In April, government ordered that funds coming from the US-based Ford Foundation should not be released by any bank to any Indian NGO without mandatory permission from the Home Ministry.

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