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The Government listed the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 for consideration in Parliament's Monsoon Session, amending the FCRA framework governing NGOs' foreign funding.
The Bill creates a centralised 'Designated Authority' in which foreign-funded assets permanently vest once an organisation's FCRA registration is cancelled, surrendered, or not renewed.
Vested assets can be transferred to government agencies or auctioned, with proceeds credited to the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI); the maximum imprisonment penalty for violations is reduced from five years to one.
Critics warn organisations that let their FCRA registration lapse to shift to domestic-only funding could permanently forfeit assets built decades earlier with foreign grants.
An FCRA registration is deemed to have ceased if cancelled by government, surrendered, denied renewal, or if no renewal application is filed before its five-year expiry. Upon cessation, all foreign contributions and assets created wholly or partly from foreign funds permanently vest in the Designated Authority.
Simple Analogy: Once an NGO's foreign-funding licence lapses in any way, ownership of what that funding built can pass to a central government-appointed authority, not just be frozen.
Fills a gap in the 2010 Act on ownership of physical assets after an organisation loses its FCRA licence
Where vested assets include a place of worship, its management is entrusted to a prescribed entity while retaining its religious character
GS Paper II > Polity, NGOs & Civil Society Regulation
A centralised body under the FCRA Amendment Bill, 2026, in which foreign-funded assets vest upon licence cessation
The main government account where all revenues, including proceeds from vested/auctioned FCRA assets, are credited