Bharat Bhushan |Why Changes In FCRA Stoke Minority Fears

In April this year, facing intense criticism and hoping to woo the Christian vote in the Kerala Assembly elections, the government deferred the Foreign Contributions (Regulation) Amendment Bill 2026. Now a second push to ratify the amendments in Parliament is underway.

A key provision of the bill is that once an organisation exits FCRA -- whether voluntarily, for non-compliance, missing the renewal deadline, or through government cancellation -- it will lose its assets created through foreign funds.

This time, some perfunctory consultations have been held with Christian groups, who have been given assurances that the seizure of assets following the cancellation of an organisation’s FCRA certificate will not apply retrospectively. Past assets -- schools, hospitals and places of worship built over decades -- will be spared.

The seized assets will vest in a “designated authority” created by the government, which can pass them on to government departments, ministries or other organisations to manage for public purposes. In principle, these could include non-governmental bodies approved by the government. There are fears that minority institutions could pass into the hands of organisations ideologically aligned with the government.

The government cites the neutral language of the bill to claim it does not discriminate on the basis of religion. It claims that the aim is to prevent foreign funds from compromising national security, public order or shifting local demographics (through proselytization). It has assured that the amendments will not permit altering the religious identity of any seized place of worship.

However, behind the statutory language, critics point out the amendments give enormous leeway for discretionary intervention by the government. They provide no checks before an organisation is deprived of its FCRA certificate. Assets can be taken over by the designated authority without judicial checks. The organisation gets no hearing before FCRA renewal is denied, and there is no appeal mechanism until after assets have already been seized.

In effect, before any independent body examines whether the action was warranted, the organisation has already lost its assets -- although judicial intervention is most useful before asset seizure. Already there is no legal provision for challenging non-renewal of an FCRA certificate. The proposed amendments will compound this disability further.

The courts are structurally locked out while seized property remains vested in the designated authority. The first appeal must go to the designated authority itself, and only if still aggrieved, can the organisation move a district court within 90 days.

Crucially, no deadline is set for the designated authority to decide an appeal -- assets can remain seized indefinitely while no order is passed, blocking recourse to filing an appeal in courts. There is also no interim relief mechanism during an appeal, allowing the designated authority to transfer or dispose of seized assets even while an appeal is pending. The designated authority as an institutionalised discretionary instrument that deprives organisations of property without clear safeguards, is against the spirit of Article 100A of the Constitution.

Parliament is being asked to vote on the text of the bill, but its operational details -- how assets are vested, managed, and disposed of, exemptions and the appellate mechanism -- are left to executive rule-making, where the real discretionary power lies, without parliamentary scrutiny.

The bill also offers no clarity on how to handle mixed funding: how foreign and domestic contributions to a hospital, school, community centre or place of worship would be separated, with only the relevant portion being seized. Left to administrative judgment, mixed-funded infrastructure could end up being seized in full -- an enormous discretionary power. The requirement of prior Central government permission for any investigation further suggests that action may be driven by the ideological leanings of those in power, applied inconsistently and selectively.

Beyond this wide discretionary space and delayed judicial remedy, what worries minority institutions most is the historical record of FCRA enforcement under the Narendra Modi government. Empirical evidence suggests that the amendments are part of an ongoing ideological project, regardless of the neutral language used.

Since Prime Minister Modi came to power, major Christian healthcare and educational networks, as well as Muslim welfare institutions, have faced intense FCRA scrutiny, with license suspended or cancelled.

Christian institutions affected include the Church's Auxiliary for Social Action (India's largest and oldest Christian humanitarian and rural development organisation), the Evangelical Fellowship of India, the Churches of North India Synodical Board of Social Service, the Indo-Global Social Service Society, the Ecreosoculis North Western Gossner Evangelical Church working on tribal welfare in Jharkhand, the Don Bosco Tribal Development Society, and Holy Spirit Ministries and New Hope Foundation, both minority-run trusts in South India.

The Union home ministry had also refused to renew the FCRA certificate of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in December 2021, freezing its accounts, before reversing the decision two weeks later under international pressure.

Muslim organisations targeted included Zakir Naik's Islamic Research Foundation (also banned under anti-terror law), Markazul Ma'arif (orphanages and schools in Assam), the All-India Muslim Education Society, and the AFMI Charitable Trust. Except for Naik's outfit, the others had licences cancelled over regulatory defaults or administrative filing errors.

An element of political targeting is suggested in the suspension of the FCRA licence of Greenpeace because of its opposition to nuclear power and coal mining, and of Amnesty International for allegedly undermining India's sovereignty and internal security. By contrast, there has been no comparable scrutiny of RSS-affiliated organisations such as Seva Bharathi and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, which have FCRA licences, while groups like the Bageshwar Dham religious body, have been granted licences under the “Religious (Hindu)” category.

So, beyond selective enforcement, the amendments appear to weaponise administrative lapses, leaving minority welfare and charitable organisations vulnerable to asset seizure over procedural delays or targeted administrative denials.

There is also a diplomatic dimension. International human rights organisations and US legislators have described the move as an effort to further restrict NGOs and civil society, including faith-based charities. US Congressman Riley Moore called the amendments "a clear attack against Christians" and urged Washington to raise the issue with New Delhi. Amnesty International and UN human rights bodies had already flagged concerns in April 2026, and the bill’s sweeping, rather than risk-based, nature may weaken India's position at FATF, giving Pakistan grounds for criticism. It could also strain ties with Europe, given the past record of the European Parliament of passing resolutions on the Narendra Modi government’s approach to civil society and minority rights.

The writer is a senior journalist based in New Delhi