4 NGOs behind N-plant stir got Rs 36 crore from abroad

The four NGOs being probed for links with the protests against the Kundankulam nuclear plant received no less than Rs 36.37 crore as foreign donations from 2006 to 2011 even as 16 other NGOs have come under the scanner of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. Shishir Gupta reports. In the net

Updated on: Mar 6, 2012, 02:40:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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The four non-governmental organisations (NGOs) being probed for links with the protests against the Kundankulam nuclear plant received no less than Rs 36.37 crore as foreign donations from 2006 to 2011 even as 16 other NGOs have come under the scanner of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, or FCRA.

The People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy is not on the list of NGOs being investigated for alleged FCRA violations but its coordinator SP Udayakumar is part of a resource network of one of the NGOs having received funds from Sweden.

Home ministry officials said the four NGOs which have been stopped from receiving foreign contributions are the Tuticorin Diocesan Association, Rural Uplift Center, Good Vision Charitable Trust and Trust for Rural Uplift and Education. The chief functionaries of these NGOs have been identified as Father Yvon Ambrose, Maria James, Manoj Thangaraj and J Napolean, respectively.

The CBI has been asked by the Centre to investigate the Tuticorin association and Rural Center whose bank accounts have been frozen after discrepancies came to light during a home ministry probe.

The ministry found that the Tuticorin association received R20.1 crore while the Rural Center received Rs 13.4 crore as foreign contributions from 2006-2011.

The ministry says that cases of the Good Vision trust and Trust for Rural Uplift and Education have been handed over to the Tamil Nadu director general of police for investigation.

The former received R1.24 crore and the latter R1.63 crore as foreign contributions in the same period. Bank accounts of both NGOs have been frozen and the Tamil Nadu DGP has been asked to submit the investigation report to the Centre.; Top government sources said that apart from the four NGOs which have been stopped from receiving foreign donations in future, show cause notices have been issued to three other NGOs by the home ministry.

They have been asked to provide details of foreign contributions received by them.; The ministry has sent notices to seven NGOs and a survey has been ordered in two cases. Of the seven NGOs, four without FCRA clearance have been sent questionnaires. One of the two FCRA-registered NGOs surveyed received Rs 30.1 lakh from Sweden but no action has been initiated against it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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