Top institutes given final chance to retain FCRA licences

IGNOU, Mumbai University and ICMR are among 4,842 institutes and organisations which have been given a final chance by the Union Home Ministry to retain their licences to receive foreign funding.
In a notification yesrerday, the home ministry said these institutes can retain their registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act if they disclose to the government their annual income and expenditure statements by October 18 after paying penalty.
Among the institutes which were given the final chance to continue their FCRA registration include Punjabi University, North Eastern Hill University, Pondicherry University, Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College and Indian Institute of Rural Development besides others, the notification accessed by PTI said.

No organisation is allowed to receive funds from abroad unless it is registered under the FCRA. It is mandatory under the law for such organisations to submit income and expenditure statement to the government annually else their registration is cancelled.
The home ministry said FCRA registration of 18,681 organisations and institutes were cancelled for not filing the returns for five consecutive years, 2010-11 to 2014-15, despite serving repeated notices.
All of them were given a month's time to file their returns between May 15 and June 17. As many as 13,681 of them responded by filing the returns or responding to the home ministry notices.

However, 4,842 of these institutes and organisations did not respond despite repeated notices.
Now, these 4,842 institutes and organisations were given the final opportunity to file the returns by October 18, the home ministry said.