Missionaries of Charity itself requested SBI to freeze all bank accounts: Centre

The Union home ministry issued a statement after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee alleged that all bank accounts of Missionaries of Charity were frozen by the Centre.

Updated on: Dec 27, 2021, 17:52:38 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Union home ministry on Monday said that the application for the renewal of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act registration of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity was refused on December 25 for not meeting the eligibility conditions under the FCRA 2010 and Foreign Contribution Regulation Rules 2011. State Bank of India informed the Union home ministry that Missionaries of Charity itself sent a request to the bank to freeze its accounts, according to a release.

The ministry issued a statement after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee alleged that all bank accounts of MoC were frozen by the Centre. Banerjee said all 22,000 patients and employees have been left without food and medicines, adding that “humanitarian efforts must not be compromised.”

The home ministry said that no request or revision application has been received from MoC for review of this refusal of renewal.

Mamata claims Centre froze all bank accounts of Missionaries of Charity

The registration of Missionaries of Charity, registered under FCRA vide Registration No 147120001, was valid up to October 31, 2021. The ministry said that the validity was subsequently extended up to December 31, 2021, along with other FCRA Associations whose renewal applications were pending renewal. While considering the MoC's renewal application, some adverse inputs were noticed, according to the central government.

“In consideration of these inputs on record, the renewal application of MoC was not approved. The FCRA registration of MoC was valid up-to 31st December 2021,” the release said.

“MHA did not freeze any accounts of MoC. State Bank of India has informed that MoC itself sent a request to SBI to freeze its accounts,” it added.

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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