When contacted, a representative from ISI declined to comment.
The journal, on the topic of ‘Peace and Conflict’, published in 2023, discussed the ethnic violence in Manipur and “unresolved political aspirations of people in Kashmir and Nagaland”.
The FCRA licence is granted by the home ministry to NGOs and think tanks for five years and their applications are reviewed on the basis of annual returns and foreign grants received for the purpose they are meant for. The FCRA Act was amended in 2020. Any misuse or diversion of foreign funds is considered a violation of the Act, said officials.
ISI, as per its website, was founded by Fr. Jerome D’Souza, who had mediated between the Vatican and (Prime Minister Jawaharlal) Nehru regarding ending Portuguese control over Indian churches. He was a member of the Indian Constituent Assembly and four times India’s delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. In the past one year, more than 100 NGOs, including Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust, headed by former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, Oxfam India and Care India have had their FCRA licences cancelled, suspended, denied renewal or deemed to have expired. Recently, the home ministry suspended FCRA registration of activist-author Harsh Mander’s Centre for Equity Studies, following which CBI carried out searches at his residence. Last month, the Centre cancelled the licence of 50-year-old think tank Centre for Policy Research.
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