New Delhi: The Kailash Satyarthi Foundation, a well-known children's rights organization, has been granted a five-year Foreign Contribution Registration Act (FCRA) license by the Union Home Ministry. This approval is set to take effect on April 1, 2023, and will last until 2028.
"The Kailash Satyarthi Foundation founded by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi has been granted five years Foreign Contribution Registration Act (FCRA) license by Home Ministry. The approval is applicable from April 1, 2023, for five years," sources said. Meanwhile, the number of organizations registered under FCRA has decreased from 16,352 to 16,325 on April 2, 2023, due to the Union Home Ministry's overhaul.
NGOs were given until March 31, 2023, to apply for the renewal of their licenses by the ministry, and this deadline was extended for certain categories until September 30, 2023. On Saturday, the six-month extension was granted to NGOs whose applications were being processed, and they were given five-year renewal licenses. Among the prominent NGOs that received the license was Satyarthi's foundation.
Kailash Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his work on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain. The jury recognized the Satyarthi foundation's efforts in this regard. According to the citation by Nobel Peace Prize 2014, "Satyarthi was born in a high-caste family. He completed a degree in electrical engineering but soon gave up his career and his high-caste name, Sharma. Instead, he called himself Satyarthi, which means 'seeker of truth.' Till 2014, Satyarthi and his colleagues had freed 83,000 children from slavery."
Some well-known NGOs, including the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Oxfam India, have had their FCRA licenses suspended, cancelled, deemed to have ceased, or revoked in the past six months. The FCRA licenses of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF) and Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust (RGCT) were cancelled in October last year. These two NGOs are headed by former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. An FCRA license is required to receive foreign grants.
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