MHA restores FCRA licence of Missionaries of Charity: All you need to know

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Nearly two weeks after the Union government refused to renew the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration of Nobel Laureate Mother Teresa-founded Missionaries of Charity (MoC), the MHA restored it on Thursday. The new FCRA certificate will be valid till the end of 2026.

The Missionaries of Charity is a Catholic religious congregation established in 1950 by Nobel laureate Mother Teresa to help the poor and destitute.

What is MoC?

The Missionaries of Charity was founded in 1950 by the late Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun who devoted most of her life to helping the poor in the eastern city of Kolkata. She won the Nobel Peace Prize and was later declared a saint.

Her organisation runs shelter homes across India. According to the Hindu daily, it received around $750 million from abroad in the 2020-21 financial year.

So what does this mean?

With the renewed registration, the charity will be able to receive and use funds from foreign contributions.

A home ministry official said that with the restoration of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licence, the Kolkata-based famed organisation will be able to receive foreign fundings and also can spend the money lying in the banks.

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), as of 7 January, there are 16,908 active or alive FCRA organisations in the country, and MoC is one of them, reported The Indian Express.

Not just Missionaries of Charity, close to 6,000 organisations and entities, including the likes of Oxfam India and Indian Medical Association (IMA), were either rejected or deemed to have lapsed under the FCRA, leaving them unable to receive funds from abroad. Officials had said majority of these outfits failed to apply for renewal of their licences while it has been alleged that withholding FCRA permission was a ploy used to harass outfits critical of the Centre.

What was the row about?

The Missionaries of Charity's FCRA licence was revoked on 25 December in a move that was widely condemned by many, including Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

On 27 December,  the home ministry had said that it cancelled the FCRA licence of Missionaries of Charity after receiving some "adverse inputs".

It also said that it did not freeze any account of the Missionaries of Charity but the State Bank of India informed it that the NGO itself sent a request to the bank to freeze its accounts.

The “adverse inputs” flagged in an audit pertained to land purchase, vehicles in the name of individuals instead of NGO. But the bigger issue was a criminal case filed against its Jharkhand wing. In July 2018, Jharkhand police had registered an FIR against Nirmal Hriday, a shelter of Ranchi run by the NGO. The staff members had been accused of selling babies to childless couples, according to News18.

After the matter became public, the Opposition, including  Banerjee and the Congress, slammed the government for the alleged "freezing" of the bank accounts of the Missionaries of Charity.

Following the home ministry action, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had directed to all District Collectors to ensure that no unit of the Missionaries of Charity, operating in the state, should face any financial crisis and if necessary use the chief minister's relief fund to help them.

Patnaik had also released over Rs 78 lakh to Missionary of Charity to run over a dozen institutes in the state.

As per the union home ministry data, the charity, set up by the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1950, was among the 5,968 non-profits taken out of FCRA ambit in December 2021.

Banerjee was among the first to launch an attack on the central government for the decision, accusing the home ministry of freezing the bank accounts of the charity headquartered in Kolkata.

The Home Ministry said it had not received a request to review its decision.

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FP Staff

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