NGOs and associations in India will face a far stricter set of conditions for receiving and spending money from abroad, after the Union Ministry of Home Affairs notified amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Rules late on Monday, June 22. The gazette notification marks the tenth change to these rules since they were first put in place in 2011, with earlier rounds of amendments having come in 2015, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024 and May 2025.
The law itself dates back to 1976, was repealed and replaced by the present Act in 2010, and took effect from May 1, 2011. Its job is to keep foreign money from working against India's national interest, public order or security. Registration lasts five years, after which an NGO must reapply.
A sharp break from the past: “general permission” no longer exists as a route under FCRA, meant to bring closer oversight of how NGOs spend foreign money. Every fresh registration must now pick a specific purpose from a Schedule attached to the rules and name the state or Union Territory of operation; both will show up on the certificate issued.
That Schedule sorts activities into five baskets, religious, cultural, economic, educational and social, with 16, 18, 19, 22 and 30 categories respectively. The religious basket runs from constructing and maintaining places of worship to religious-education programmes and devotional music, plus a specific entry for “burial/cremation ground development and maintenance.” Three categories, religious education, documentation of faith traditions, and preservation of indigenous beliefs, carry the qualifier “excluding proselytisation,” repeated for the entry on “indigenous and tribal faith practices, rituals and systems of worship,” and for “conduct of religious education, moral instruction, satsangs, discourses, and meditation retreats.”
Two other baskets keep out politics. The educational list tags its entry on “awareness programmes on constitutional rights, fundamental duties, and civic responsibilities” with “strictly non-political in nature.” The cultural list rules out “political/ ideological content” from “promotion of contemporary arts inspired by Indian traditions.” Economic and social purposes cover sectors such as heritage preservation, healthcare, rural development, women's empowerment and environmental protection.
The amendments redraw who counts as a “key functionary”: company directors, partners in a firm, trustees, the Karta of a Hindu Undivided Family, governing body members, and effectively anyone who controls or runs the organisation's affairs. Where such functionaries are foreign nationals not of Indian origin, the association will “ordinarily not be considered” for registration or prior permission, though the central government may carve out exceptions through a specific order.
Associations already registered get one year to tell the government, through a new Form FC-6F, which purpose and state or Union Territory they intend to keep. The basic fee covers one purpose and one state or Union Territory; every extra one of either costs Rs 300 more.
To stop dormant NGOs from sitting on unused licences, renewal now depends on actual spending: an NGO must show, across its two most recent financial years, that it put at least Rs 10 lakh in foreign money to work on its declared activities, a benchmark the amendments call “reasonable activity.”
Money released under “Prior Permission” arrives in stages, and an NGO will not get its next stage until it has accounted for at least three-quarters of the previous tranche, verified through field inquiries. A new Form FC-3BB will be used for these follow-on releases, with paperwork now needing certification from a chartered accountant.
Fresh disclosures are also required: social media accounts and websites in registration or renewal applications, and the actual original donor where money has passed through an “intermediary remittance vehicle” or a “Donor Advised Fund.” A “detailed activity report” must now accompany the usual financial statements in annual filings, and associations must flag any publishing activity by themselves or their key functionaries that year, whether a book, magazine article or newspaper piece, since the rules keep NGOs from putting out “news or current affairs.”
A separate order fixes the fines. Spending foreign funds outside an NGO's approved purpose or area draws a fine equal to 30 per cent of the misused sum or Rs 1 lakh, whichever is larger, and the same yardstick covers spending beyond administrative ceilings or speculative use of funds.
The ministry says 14,456 NGOs currently hold FCRA registration, drawing in close to Rs 22,000 crore in foreign funds annually, even as over 18,000 registrations have been cancelled since 2015. Separately, a Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill introduced in Parliament in March 2026 would let the government appoint a “designated authority” with power to run or dispose of the assets an NGO has built using foreign money, where its licence ends up cancelled, suspended or left unrenewed. The Bill is expected to come up for debate when Parliament's monsoon session convenes.
