New Delhi

The Union Home Ministry (MHA) today defended its decision to cancel the foreign contribution registration of Greenpeace India before the Delhi High Court, saying the NGO had violated the norms by opening five accounts to utilise foreign donations without informing the relevant authorities.

The MHA, in an affidavit before Justice V P Vaish charged Greenpeace with violating Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) by merging its foreign donations with domestic contributions.

Holding that Greenpeace have not come before the court with clean hands, the ministry said they were “continuing to use their FCRA accounts despite suspension of the same on April 9, 2015”.

“It is submitted that sufficient materials are there to prove that Greenpeace violated various sections of FCRA 2010, which are also mentioned in the suspension order dt. April 9.

“The suspension order mention about acts and omissions on the part of Greenpeace regarding violations of provisions of FCRA 2010 and Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Rules (FCRR) 2011 and a reasonable opportunity was also given to them,” the MHA said in their affidavit.

The affidavit has been filed in a plea moved by the NGO challenging suspension of its FCRA registration and freezing of its foreign and domestic contribution accounts.

The court had on May 27 allowed Greenpeace to use two of its accounts for the purpose of receiving and utilising fresh domestic donations for its day-to-day functioning. The Ministry had on April 9 this year suspended the NGO’s registration under FCRA for 180 days.

The Greenpeace has said in its petition that the Ministry had earlier issued show cause notice to it asking why its registration should not be cancelled for allegedly transferring monies from its “FCRA-designated bank to the FCRA utilisation account and from there to five other undeclared utilisation bank accounts without informing the authority”.

Affirming its decision, the ministry said, “After taking into account the seriousness of the violation committed by the association, Central government, in exercise of the power conferred by section 14 of FCRA 2010…cancelled the permanent registration of association namely, Greenpeace India society.

“The accounts were frozen in accordance with section 13 (2) FCRA 2010. Since a suspension order under section 13(1) was already passed and the consequences statutorily stipulated under section 13(2)(a)(b) wherein operations namely – disentitlement to receive foreign contribution and prohibition from utilising accounts subject to operation of rule 14, therefore the accounts were frozen,” the ministry said.

It further submitted that hindrance of projects cannot be the ground for violation of the law of the land, that is FCRA 2010, and the execution of the projects must be in consonance with FCRA 2010 under which the foreign contribution was received.

The Greenpeace’s FCRA licence is learnt to have been cancelled on September 2.

The court has now fixed the matter for further hearing on September 17.

PTI