The new amendment to FCRA 2026 (the amendment) is nothing but an act aimed at intimidating and confiscating the property of India's Christian communities without complying with the due process of law of the Land. Its introduction immediately before the election in Kerala itself can only be seen as a political tactic by the BJP government to spread fear. The amendment is a grave violation of the country's constitutional principles. It is nothing but an act to appropriate property belonging to India's minority communities.
The statement of objectives and reasons for the amendment claims that ‘the absence of a comprehensive framework for supervision, management, and disposal of such assets has led to administrative uncertainty and a scope for misuse'. The statement itself is far from reality; such mismanagement, misuse, or appropriation of property is already criminalised under Chapter VIII of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010 (the 2010 Act). Arbitrarily confiscating assets has never been a method anywhere in the world to prevent administrative uncertainty or misuse of property, except in Imperial British India and under the slave trade.
The current legal framework under the 2010 Act requires that, upon receipt of an application for a certificate of renewal (s. 12 of the 2010 Act), the applicant be informed of the reasons for refusal to renew. However, the Amendments. 14B, states that ‘the certificate shall be deemed to have ceased on the expiry of its period of validity if: (a) the application for renewal has not been made, (b) the application for renewal has been made but refused by the central government, (c) the certificate is not renewed before its expiry; and 14(B)(2) no person whose certificate has ceased to exist shall either receive or utilise the foreign contribution, and assets of the foreign contribution will be provisionally vested with the Designated Authority’.
The 2010 Act prevented any further acceptance of foreign contributions during the period of suspension but allowed the utilisation of the assets in possession, and statutorily imposed a duty to afford an opportunity of being heard. Whereas Amendment 2026 simply takes away that statutory protection and the operation of law, the assets will be vested in a designated authority upon non-renewal of the certificate. The Amendment prohibits any opportunity to challenge the decision. Whereas the 2010 Act prohibits cancellation of certificates without the party having been ‘given a reasonable opportunity of being heard’. Whilst the renewal is refused, ‘the asset shall vest in the Designated Authority, without even communicating the reasons to the parties, let alone any judicial process’. It can only be seen, in ‘urban Naxal’ terms, as confiscation of private property; in RSS Marxist terms, as confiscation of minorities' property.
A shocking change is proposed: upon producing a fresh, renewed, or restored certificate, the designated authority is only required to return the unutilised assets, in other words, whatever is left over to be returned. So, the designated authority is entitled to use them and even dispose of them if they wish, even to the extent of Jungle Raj; the title deed is not required to prove the transferee’s ownership of the property.
Yet another draconian change: if the vested assets were used as a place of worship, the designated authority would entrust a person of their choice to manage it without consulting those running its operations, nothing but taking full control of religious institutions without any checks and balances.
The Designated Authority's taking control (confiscation) of the assets is absolute by operation of the Amendment and cannot be challenged. Although it allows the ‘aggrieved party, by an order of the Designated Authority’, to appeal, it only permits subsequent decisions of the authority to be challenged, not the process by which the assets are vested in the authority. S. 29 of the 2010 Act provides that ‘any confiscation may be challenged’. So confiscation itself can be challenged, ‘without limit, by the court of session, to the High Court to which court is subordinate’. The Amendment deprives the right to challenge confiscation through the judicial process, thereby violating Article 30 of the Constitution, which is a fundamental right, and Article 300A of the Constitution.
In the British legal framework, NGOs are governed by the Charities Act 2011 and, to some extent, by trust law. The relevant body is the Charity Commission, and its decision can be challenged through an internal review, then by the First-tier Tribunal, an independent tribunal. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal can be challenged by Judicial Review in the High Court on the grounds of ultra vires, a violation of the principles of fairness, or a failure to properly consider the relevant facts or evidence, thereby ensuring a fair judicial process. Thus, the British legal framework guarantees a judicial check and balance on any confiscation process and on the confiscation itself.
In France, confiscation can be challenged through an appeal to the Conseil d’État (Council of State), the highest administrative court in France, under ‘recours pour abuse de pouvoir’, - recourse for abuse of power. The French courts have the power to annul the decision to confiscate if it is ‘illegal’ or ‘disproportionné’. An application can be made to the court under Urgent Suspension (Re’ef ’e’r’e- Liberte), requesting an emergency hearing. The court must hear the matter within 48 hrs and can suspend the government decision until a full hearing. Any order to seize or confiscate can be challenged in criminal courts, where the evidence used to justify the process as a whole is in question. Even after exploring all these domestic judicial avenues, a party may still bring a case before the European Court of Human Rights. In Britain and France, judicial processes provide checks and balances on the proportionality of government action when confiscating such assets, but the Amendment, without such, takes over the properties of the NGOs.
The comments made by local BJP leaders indicate that the amendment, introduced in the wake of this assembly election in Kerala, was intended to intimidate the Christian community and serve as a political bargaining chip to secure the BJP's victory in the election.
The abolition and appropriation of private property was a slogan of communists, the old order. But in ‘Modern India’, the abolition of religious property of the Christian minority (and Muslim property, the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025) has become a BJP and RSS slogan. Perhaps the reasoning of the RSS leader, who claims that the RSS has socialist credentials, but with an exception for ‘the Karta of a Hindu undivided family’, could be seen as ‘we are Hindus even before we emerge from the womb of our mother; we are therefore born as Hindus; they are born to this world as simple, unnamed human beings and later on, either circumcised or baptised, they become Muslims or Christians’; therefore ‘this land is ours’, ‘the Hindu Nation’. Needless to say, any Indian who lives in India or abroad, with ‘sense, sensibility, and sensitivity’, will never accept the argument that India is a Hindu Nation, no matter who rules India.
The author is a learned and trained British criminal defense lawyer, an Indian Christian with ‘sense, sensibility, and sensitivity’, and the former Mayor of Cambridge City.