SC may seek law to ’control’ NGOs

DHNS

New Delhi, 15 Sep 2016: The Supreme Court on Wednesday indicated that it may ask the Law Commission to recommend a law to regulate the flow of funds to about 29.99 lakh NGOs functioning in the country.

 

A bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice A M Khanwilkar appointed senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi to assist the court as amicus curiae for resolving the issue.

 

“We can refer to the Law Commission to bring a law to control the NGOs. At least for the future, we want to know whether we can do some exercise to regulate these organisations,” the bench said on a PIL filed by advocate Manohar Lal Sharma in 2011. “This is a major problem. They (NGOs) are getting money from all over the world. It is mind-boggling,” the bench said.

 

The petitioner contended that 80% of the NGOs survived on foreign funds and some of them were being run by retired government employees and politicians.

 

According to the CBI, only 2,90,787 out of the 29,99,623 registered NGOs filed their annual financial statements. The CBI claimed that in certain states, the NGOs operated without being transparent about their financial affairs. Only 50, out of a total 82,250 NGOs registered in the Union territories, filed their returns, the CBI claimed in an earlier affidavit.

 

The court had earlier widened the scope of the PIL filed by Sharma alleging misuse of funds by Anna Hazare’s NGO Hind Swaraj Trust and sought a status report from the CBI.