Greenpeace India today alleged that the government's move to suspend its licence to receive funds is a "smokescreen" to shut down its operations in the country completely, a charge dismissed by the Centre which said the action was taken against the NGO for its "mischief".
Last week, the Home Ministry had temporarily suspended the NGO's licence to receive money from overseas and served it with a show cause notice for alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.
In a statement, Greenpeace said, "... The MHA's actions indicate that the alleged FCRA violations are a smokescreen for the government to shut down the NGO's entire operations. Greenpeace India gets almost 70 per cent of its funds from Indians, and the MHA has ordered that these funds be frozen as well. There is no provision in the FCRA Act, 2010 which permits this."
Samit Aich, Executive Director of Greenpeace India, said the organisation will follow due process and respond to the MHA's claims of FCRA violations and take the matter to court.
"But the government has also blocked our domestic accounts and is now preventing ordinary Indians from supporting our work for clean air, healthy forests, pesticide-free food... this shows quite clearly that the real objective is not to restrict our access to foreign funds, but to shut us down completely," it claimed.
A senior Home Ministry official said it has frozen two bank accounts operated for receiving and utilisation of foreign contributions by Greenpeace India and five other accounts, which were "illegally" used for parking foreign contribution.
"The NGO's activities were put on restrictions due to its own mischief as they were using five bank accounts where foreign funds were transferred illegally. We have frozen all these accounts," the official said.
The Home Ministry does not have jurisdiction to stop domestic contribution to any NGO and is not interested in doing so, the official said.
Since seven accounts of Greenpeace India were blocked, one or more bank accounts where domestic contributions were also parked might have got blocked in the process, the official said.
"We have nothing to do with it as we have frozen all seven accounts after verifying relevant documents and finding faults in their operations," the official said.
