Dear Friends,
I wanted to bring to notice a strange incident which happened yesterday which looks like a new Fraud taking place but I am unable to understand the motive.
I got a call yesterday (22nd October) around 5:45 p.m. from a gentleman with a middle aged well groomed voice saying that he was calling from the Home Ministry and that the call was regarding my organization’s FCRA registration. My Organisation’s FCRA renewal is due in 2021 but the gentleman said that this was a routine monitoring call and that I needed to send some information to the department. This was followed by a long whatsapp message with a long list of information points which I needed to send most of which had already been submitted at the time of previous FCRA renewal.
I messaged him on 22nd night and asked him to send me an email from his official id so that I can respond to the same and send him all the required information. However, he said that there is no system of sending an official email and that the team does ‘on spot’ visit without prior information. Now, he has told me that his team will visit our office in few days.
He has shared a list on whatsapp (2 A4 size print) asking information which I am supposed to keep ready before the visit.
I just want to know if any of you know about this random monitoring procedure and if any other orgnaisation has gone through with similar review.
Ajay Kumar
While this is not OK, I must also admit that while we have not faced such situations, my own random enquiries with professionals who work in FCRA, have admitted that sometimes this does happen. However if anyone visits you, you must ask for order as per S. 23 of the FCRA Act. S.23 requires that a order will authorize such enquiries and that too by at least a gazetted officer.
However as a professional and as a law-abiding citizen I must state that this is not OK. FCRA Dept must follow proper procedure. It cannot allow its officers to undertake such roving enquiries. How it will ensure that such roving enquiries do not result in unauthorized malpractices by making extraneous demanding on the organisations. We must all resist this.
We never recieved such message. You can inquire from FCRA Wing of Home Affairs Ministry for validity of such message.
yes we also had some experience, but the documents asked are already in public domain
I think the matter should be reported to support email given on the FCRA website. We applied for renewal in May 2018..Our FC permission expired in Dec 2018. We are still waiting for grant of renewal. Earlier this week a team of two members visited the house of one of our members with prior appointment. He is the latest member in our governing body. Now we have to send individual affidavit by each member of the governing body.
Just shared our experience…If it will be if any use
Snigdha Sarkar
Anwesha Kolkata