The Home Ministry has cancelled the foreign funding licence of activist Teesta Setalvad’s NGO a day after it renewed the Citizens for Justice and Peace’s registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. The organisation’s licence had been processed before IAS officer GK Dwivedi was removed from its FCRA division in September for renewing the registration of Islamic preacher Zakir Naik’s NGO, Islamic Research Foundation, the ministry said, according to The Indian Express.
Moreover, the ministry also suspects that its servers could have been hacked. It has directed the Computer Emergency Response System-India to investigate the possible breach, The Hindu reported. Their suspicions grew after the licences of CPJ, as well as Greenpeace India and Setalvad’s other NGO, Sabrang Trust, were renewed.
CPJ had been added to the “prior permission” category of the FCRA in July, as per which an NGO cannot receive funds without approval from the Home Ministry. However, the renewed licence on Tuesday did not mention whether the NGO had been added under the same category.
The licences of the Sabrang Trust and Greenpeace India had been cancelled earlier this year. Setalvad, who faces accusations of transferring Rs 50 lakh from Sabrang Trust’s account for “personal gains”, had denied the allegations and said they would “explore legal options” to challenge the decision.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had ordered an immediate audit of the financial sector, starting with the National Payment Corporation of India, in view of the recent cases of Twitter accounts being hacked. Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad has ordered a revamp of the “entire IT infrastructure” in the country to fortify the online security.
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