The ministry had denied the FCRA licence earlier this year, after which the IEG appealed to higher authorities seeking its restoration.
The IEG is the second prominent non-governmental organisation (NGO) whose FCRA licence was denied but later restored. Earlier, the FCRA licence of Kolkata-headquartered Missionaries of Charity was renewed in January 2022 by revision of an order issued by the Union government.
ET was the first to report, on April 4, on the cancellation of the IEG’s FCRA licence along with that of four other prominent NGOs. The home ministry had cited violations of FCRA rules for the cancellation of the licence.
Confirming the development, IEG director Chetan Ghate told ET, “The FCRA licence of IEG has been renewed.”Founded in 1952, the IEG is one of India’s leading academic institutions in the fields of economic and social development. It also organises regular training programmes for the trainee officers of the Indian Economic Service and other government officers. Since 2022, in joint partnership with the Union finance ministry, it has been organising the Kautilya Economic Conclave, a conference on global economic issues.In an earlier statement, the IEG said that it had “applied afresh for registration” after its renewal application was turned down. “IEG’s FCRA renewal application has been turned down because of pending compliance, that is, certain documents were not submitted as part of the renewal process,” it said.
It further said, “IEG is an ICSSR Institute and is largely dependent on the government for funding, not on foreign funds. In 2022-23, the project grant from FCRA projects was approximately 4 percent of the total grants of IEG, a small amount.”
According to officials, several prominent NGOs lost their FCRA licences after the scrutiny this year, while 220 new FCRA registration licences have been issued to NGOs till date. These NGOs include Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s Meer Foundation and Vedanta-backed Cairn Foundation.
In the past two years, more than 100 NGOs, including the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust (headed by former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi) and Oxfam India have lost their FCRA licences on charges of alleged misuse of foreign grants.
