The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 (FCRA) regulates the acceptance of foreign contribution by organizations in India. Due to the wide increase in infractions of FCRA, make strong compliance mechanism became the need of the hour. As provided in the legislative note of the FCR (Amendment) Bill, 2020, the main motto behind this legislation was to prohibit utilization of foreign contribution towards activities against national interest.
The FCRA Act, 2020 came into effect on 29th September, 2020. This Amendment made to the act seeks to combat misappropriation of foreign contribution by increasing transparency and accountability of receipt and utilizations of foreign contribution funds. The following are the changes brought by the Foreign Contribution Regulation (Amendment) Act, 2020.
The FCRA endows a governance framework which is governing foreign contributions or donations received in India, including, inter alia, norms on registration and prior permission requirements for receiving foreign contribution, financials filing, utilizations of funds & prohibitions applicable on foreign contribution receipt.
This Advisory Is Meant For These Following Categories:
(a) Those who have submitted application for registration or for Prior Permission
(b) Those who have submitted application for Renewal
(c) Those who wanted to submit application for registration or for Prior Permission
(d) Those who are about to submit application for renewal
(e) Those who have valid FCRA registration or Prior Permission and do not need immediately renewal of such certificate/PP.
i. The NGO/person can pay attention to FCRA, 2010 amendments and assure compliance. These amendments may be visited at this web address-https://fcraonline.nic.in
ii. The NGO/person may take note of FCRR, 2011-amendments for compliance. These amendments may be visited at this web address –https://fcraonline.nic.in/home/PDF_Doc/fc_rules_12112020.pdf.
iii. From these amendments various requirements has arisen and among all of them, three key compliances relate to:
- Getting a DARPAN ID from NITI Aayog portal;
- Opening the Main “FCRA Account” in SBI Parliament Street Branch, New Delhi; and
- Seeding Adhaar details of all office bearers. An advisory statement on these three key compliances is mentioned in this PDF , kindly go through this link and get a full access of entire compliances (https://fcraonline.nic.in/home/PDF_Doc/fc_rules_12112020.pdf).
iv. Regarding compliance on FCRA “Bank Accounts”, a separate public notice on 13 October 2020 has been issued with detailed clarifications, and you can get access of this document by visiting this PDF. (https://fcraonline.nic.in/home/PDF_Doc/fc_notice_13102020.pdf). A standard operating procedure also known as SOP to be followed by all branches of SBI is placed on the web portal (https://fcraonline.nic.in/home/PDF_Doc/fc_sop_20112020.pdf) and also available on the web portal of the SBI (State Bank of India).
2. Every person/association are requested to carefully go through and familiarize itself with all the amendments made in the Act and the Rules and related contents as indicated above to ensure thorough compliance. Proactive response of NGO would make a quick and sleek transition to the amended legal regime.