More shock was in store for the union home ministry on Thursday when it discovered that cancelled foreign funding licenses of three more NGOs were renewed earlier, in addition ot the three it had discovered on Wednesday.
More shock was in store for the union home ministry on Thursday when it discovered that cancelled foreign funding licenses of three more NGOs were renewed earlier, in addition ot the three it had discovered on Wednesday.
Top home ministry were taken aback on Wednesday after finding that ministry’s online process was compromised to renew FCRA licenses of three NGOs - activist Teesta Setalvad’s Sabrang Trust and Citizen for Justice and Peace (CJP) and Greenpeace India.
The scrutiny of online data led to the discovery that cancelled license of Gujarat based Navsarjan Trust, Delhi based Act Now for Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD) and one other Gujarat based NGO Rural Development Research Centre were renewed in the month of August 2016.
All the renewals that have come to the light so far, incidentally, were done in the month of August this year, the period when televangelist Zakir Naik’s now banned NGO, Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) license was also renewed. The blunder had led to the removal of the then joint secretary, G K Dwivedi and suspension of three junior officials.
The ministry has shot an express circular revising the renewal order of all the in question NGOs and declaring the renewal as non-est-ab-initio meaning null and void.
Highly placed sources said, the ministry has taken the goof up very seriously and has already instituted an inquiry to find out the guilty, as such glaring mistakes, despite putting red flags, can only happen when an insider is compromised.
Besides, the ministry has also tasked the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to find out if the online renewal system was hacked or compromised.
Besides, ordering re-vetting of all the 13,000 odd NGOs whose licenses were renewed before March 31 and October 31, the ministry has also asked the national informatics centre (NIC) to make the online system more secure by making the red flagged NGOs as read only file for all the officials below the level of joint secretary official.
“This would allow only the joint secretary to give nod for the renewal of red flagged NGOs,” said sources.
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