Union Home Minister Amit Shah met two delegations of Christian leaders at the Parliament House complex on Thursday, August 6, in a bid to ease concerns over the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, ahead of its expected return to the Lok Sabha next week.
One delegation, the 18-member Joint Action Forum on Minorities, was chaired by DMK Rajya Sabha MP P. Wilson and included Most Rev. Anil Joseph Thomas Couto, the Secretary General of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, Rev. Asir Ebenezer, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches in India as well as the Deputy Secretary General of the CBCI, Rev. Dr. Mathew Koyickal. The members of the delegation drew from India’s three main Christian traditions, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. A separate delegation that met Shah the same day included Mizoram Chief Minister Lalduhoma.
A member of the Wilson-led group said Shah described the proposed law as “religion-neutral” and told them the government had no intention of harassing the Christian community or any other faith. Ebenezer, who later spoke to The Hindu, said the Home Minister gave the delegation close to an hour and clarified that the Bill targeted lawbreakers, not the Christian faith. He said the forum had asked Shah for a full review of the parent FCRA Act, 2010.
Wilson told the news agency ANI that Shah heard the delegation out patiently. “He heard us, and he said that he’ll look into this matter,” he said. The forum’s written representation asked that the Bill either be withdrawn or, together with the 2010 Act, be referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee for broader consultation. A memorandum submitted by the group, reported by Kashmir Reader, described the proposed law as “confiscatory” in nature and said it would replace the existing regulatory framework with one harmful to charitable institutions.
At the heart of the delegation’s objection is a Bill provision setting up a government-appointed body with power over assets built from foreign donations, should an NGO’s FCRA registration be suspended, cancelled or not renewed. This body could manage such assets, hand them to another entity, or arrange for their sale. Ebenezer said the forum had separately raised the possibility of assets being treated as forfeited even without a formal cancellation order, and had asked Shah for a list of cases where NGO registrations were cancelled without prior notice.
Lalduhoma said Shah indicated the Bill was likely to come up in Parliament on August 12, a day before the Monsoon Session ends. He added that his delegation had secured one clear assurance, that the Bill would not apply retrospectively.
Government sources said afterward that the Bill’s text would not change further, though the Rules still to be notified would set out how any asset takeover would work. Assets would not pass automatically to the government the moment a registration lapsed, the sources said; a notice would first be issued, and takeover would follow only if a property’s use departed from its declared purpose.
Thursday’s meetings were the latest in a run of engagements Shah has held with Christian leaders since the Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 25, a passage stalled at the time by opposition protests. Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma had raised similar concerns with Shah on July 5. Earlier still, on July 10, Shah told the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, the Catholic Church’s apex body in the country, that the legislation was not aimed at Christian-run NGOs, noting that such organisations account for under 15 percent of the foreign donations received nationally. On July 22, the Press Information Bureau had said that any place of worship coming under the new authority’s oversight would retain its religious character.
