Calcutta Diocese of Church of North India Maintains Separate FCRA Account Despite Revocation Talks

In spite of "talks of the revocation of the FCRA licence of the Church of North India," the diocese of Calcutta in the Church of North India maintains a separate Foreign Contribution Regulation Act account, according to Reverend Paritosh Canning, the diocese's bishop, who spoke with The Telegraph on Monday.

Any NGO or association that has to accept foreign funding must have an FCRA licence.

The Calcutta diocese, according to Reverend Canning, "only possesses a few projects that are dependent on foreign contribution." One of those projects is a house in Behala.

"These days, we hardly get any foreign funding," he remarked.

Some of the oldest educational establishments in the city, the Calcutta diocese of the Church of North India oversees 15 English- and 15 Bengali-medium schools.

The bishop made it clear that none of the schools receive funding from outside sources; instead, they are all supported by CNI funds.

"There is no foreign funding for our schools. The bishop stated, "They are funded by tuition fees."

According to other foreign-funded non-governmental organizations in Calcutta, the requirements for FCRA licenses have tightened in recent years.

Because foreign funding is dependent on our projects, we must exercise caution when it comes to the documentation. We cannot carry out our projects without foreign funding," a senior representative of a non-governmental organization that assists women and children stated.

According to a different official, foreign funds must be used for the intended purpose for which they were designated.

"The money from abroad that we have received for a nutrition project must be used exclusively for that. It cannot be used for a project aimed at educating people, according to a representative of Calcutta Rescue, a charity that gets funding from abroad for some of its social work.

"In order to ensure that there are no extra funds, the contribution requests that we make to the support groups or the fundraising team must be simplified. The Calcutta Rescue official stated, "If our costs exceed the funds provided by a foreign donor, we inform the donor that we have spent their funds and are now using local funds for the remainder of the project."

Every five years, each FCRA registration needs to be renewed.

The president of the nonprofit Calcutta Social Project, Arjun Dutta, stated, "We have to file the returns every year."

"Questions are coming in, and we need to be ready with responses. For instance, if we purchase a piece of real estate, we must be ready to disclose whose funds were used to purchase it, according to Dutta.

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