The Ministry of Home Affairs has allowed the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust to receive foreign funds for the construction of the Ram temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya, announced the trust’s general secretary Champat Rai.
As of March 23, more than 100 non-profit organisations had their Foreign Contribution Regulation Act licences revoked over a seven-month period. This includes Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity, Oxfam India, the Centre for Policy Research, the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust, and the Programme for Social Action.
The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act regulates foreign contributions to Indian entities and their subsidiaries.
According to the law, any organisation that wishes to register itself must be at least three years old and must have spent at least Rs 15,00,000 on its primary activities over the previous three fiscal years for the benefit of society.
Rai had said earlier this month that the trust, overseeing the construction of the temple, had submitted an application for registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. He said that nearly £90 million had been spent for the construction and £300 million was remaining with the trust.
The general secretary noted that all prior analyses of the speed of construction work had “turned out wrong”.
“In the beginning, we had thought that the work would be completed in these many years, but none of us had the experience of working with stone,” said Rai. “Larson & Toubro and Tata [companies engaged in the construction work] did not have that experience. They had never done stone-carving, and hence, all analyses were wrong.”
