Times of India: New Delhi: Wednesday, 09 July 2014.
The CBI on
Tuesday informed the Supreme Court that the country has a mindboggling number
of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and counting them has become a
difficult task as most do not file fund audit reports with authorities.
Appearing for
the CBI, additional solicitor general L N Rao told a bench of Justices H L
Dattu, R K Agrawal and Arun Kumar Mishra that in West Bengal, there were around
2,34,000 NGOs but only 16,000, that is about 8%, had filed their audited
reports on receipt of grants and expenditure.
The court had
in September last year entrusted the CBI with the gigantic task of compiling
information about all registered NGOs in the country, their funding and audit
reports after advocate M L Sharma filed a PIL alleging irregularities in an NGO
linked to social activist Anna Hazare.
The CBI,
through senior advocate K Radhakrishnan, told the court that "the
information received so far from the states ran into lakhs of pages and the
work involved is extremely voluminous". The CBI said "no information
has so far been received from Gujarat and Tamil Nadu in spite of reminders".
"Information
from Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya
Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra and
Union Territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Delhi has been received only
partly," the agency said.
The bench
asked, "Has the CBI done anything about the NGOs which have been
identified and data about whom have been compiled?" It said the CBI must
find out how many of the NGOs have submitted audit report of their expenses.
Rao sought
three more months to complete the exercise. The bench agreed and asked the
agency to compile the information sought by the court and file a report in
three months.
In an earlier
affidavit, the CBI had conservatively estimated the number of NGOs in the
country to be over 20 lakh. Uttar Pradesh alone had 5,48,194 NGOs. Kerala had
3,69,137 NGOs, Maharashtra 1,07,797 and Madhya Pradesh over 1,40,000.
While Kerala
and Maharashtra gave details of finances of the NGOs operating in their area,
Madhya Pradesh gave partial information about their funding. Gujarat was
completely silent.
According to
information received through RTI queries by Asian Centre for Human Rights, the
Union and state governments between 2002 and 2009 released Rs 6,654 crore to
various NGOs, averaging almost Rs 950 crore per year. For the financial year
2010-11, available data shows that about 22,000 NGOs received more than $2
billion from abroad, of which $650 million came from the US.
.JPG)
.JPG)
