All India Christian Council Opposes the FCRA Amendment Bill

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 Press Statement

For Immediate Release

The All India Christian Council Opposes the FCRA Amendment Bill and

Calls on all Parties to Resist it

Hyderabad, 27 July 2026,

The All India Christian Council views with deep alarm the government’s evident determination to bring the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 — widely known as FCRA 2.0 — before Parliament in the current Monsoon Session for consideration and passage. We oppose this Bill, and we call on every political party that values the Constitution to resist it.

A Bill revived without consultation

This Bill returns to the floor of the House without the widespread consultation with minority community leaders that was promised due to its gravity demands. When serious objections were raised earlier by the Christian community and other minorities, the matter was set aside. It now reappears with those objections neither answered nor addressed. To move a law of this consequence past the very communities it most affects, without dialogue, is not the conduct of a government confident in its own case. We insist to send this to a joint parliamentary committee because it has widespread implications to minority institutions and other religious institutions and serious damage to our global credibility about being a safe destination for foreign investments. If the government has attached assets which individuals who run major corporates and have given to Christian compassionate work how does it affect their attitude to investment in India for business.

The seizure of assets is the heart of our objection

At the centre of this Bill lies a provision that should trouble every citizen, not only people of faith. Under it, the foreign contributions and the assets of an organisation whose FCRA registration is cancelled, surrendered, or simply expires without renewal would vest in a government-notified “Designated Authority.”

Consider plainly what this means. Properties lawfully purchased — schools, hostels, hospitals, clinics — built with funds legitimately received from within India and abroad, may be taken over by an arm of the state upon the lapse of a licence. The money belonged to the donors and the institutions. The buildings were raised to serve the poor. No Christian organisation has ever signed any undertaking agreeing that, should its registration not be renewed, its property may pass to a government authority. Much of this support has come from practising faith communities, in India and around the world, given freely for the service of the needy. Were there any clear, agreed contractual basis for such a transfer, that would be another matter. There is none.

We can find no clear constitutional foundation offered for this power to seize legitimately held assets. It strikes directly at the fundamental rights of citizens — to hold property, to form associations, and to practise and propagate their faith through works of charity — rights guaranteed under Articles 19, 25 and 26 of the Constitution.

The comparison with foreign laws is misleading

The government defends the Bill by pointing to foreign-funding laws in other democracies. This comparison misleads the Indian public, because it omits the one distinction that matters. No serious democracy requires an organisation to obtain the government’s permission in order to receive foreign funds for its work. What those laws require is disclosure — that you report the money you receive. The FCRA regime requires permission — that the state decide whether you may receive it at all, and now, that it may take what you have built if that permission is withdrawn. Information is not the same as permission, and a registration form is not the same as a locked door.

We note, too, that the government presents the reduction of the maximum penalty from five years’ imprisonment to one as evidence of a gentler law. A lighter punishment attached to a far greater power — the power to take an institution’s assets outright — is no liberalisation. It is a heavier hand in a softer glove.

A changed political reality

When the FCRA was first tightened, it was under a secular Congress government. The context today is materially different, and the minority communities of India are not blind to it.

Discretionary power of this magnitude — to cancel a registration and then absorb the assets that follow — is only as safe as the hands that wield it and the spirit in which it is exercised. When such power is concentrated in the executive, without constitutional clarity and without independent check, the question of who ultimately controls it, and to what ends, cannot be set aside. That question weighs heavily on every minority institution in this country since the role of the RSS’ influence which itself is unregistered and not accountable on the Government is known to most people.

Our call

The All India Christian Council therefore opposes this Bill in the strongest terms. We call upon all political parties, across every divide, to resist its passage, to demand that it be referred back for genuine consultation with the affected communities, and to challenge in every constitutional forum a strategy that would transfer control of minority institutions to the state by the mechanism of a lapsed licence.

The churches of India have served this nation’s poorest — of every faith and caste — for generations. We have always been willing to open our accounts to lawful scrutiny. We will not accept that our right to serve exists only at the pleasure of those in power, or that the fruit of a century’s charity may be taken from the communities that built it. We ask all people of goodwill to stand with us.

Issued by the All India Christian Council

Rev Madhu Chandra,

Secretary - 9100952490

Email: aiccdelhi@gmail.com