Amit Shah launches FCRA 2.0 Portal and e-OCI Card

Amit Shah yesterday launched the FCRA 2.0 Portal and e-OCI Card in New Delhi. On this occasion, Union Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), and several other senior officials were present.

On this occasion, Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Shri Amit Shah said in his address that both the new initiatives launched today will prove to be highly beneficial in increasing the convenience of citizens. He said that both these initiatives started today will enhance facilities for citizens and, in particular, will resolve the difficulties faced by those receiving donations through the FCRA portal. He recalled that in 2014, when Shri Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, he had said that our government would work on the principle of ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’. Shri Shah further said that when the intention is clear, the policy is transparent, and there is a mindset to embrace technology, then all forms of governance become very easy for honest people, a strict surveillance system is put in place for wrongdoers, and the country can be made increasingly secure.

Amit Shah said that prior to 2014, the FCRA system was entangled in files and procedures and was beyond proper oversight, which is critical for both national security and development. He said that after the government was formed under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi in 2014, the system was strengthened. The renewal of the FCRA portal today will greatly enhance ease of operations for organisations. He said that in the past years, there has been a significant increase in the number of applications and the flow of donations. Keeping this in view, reducing paperwork and ensuring real-time effective monitoring of foreign contributions is very important for the country’s security. He said that due to FCRA law, monitoring on foreign contributions coming with wrong intentions will increase. Shri Shah said that with the launch of this new system, the process of physically submitting documents will be eliminated. Facilities such as e-Sign-based authentication, OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and the NGO Darpan bank account integration system will be ensured. He added that since all this data will be hosted on 'MeghRaj' (Government Cloud), the possibility of data theft will be greatly reduced. Along with this, an FCRA mobile application, an AI-powered chatbot, and a dedicated online dashboard for banks will also be launched in the coming months.

Union Home Minister said that the e-OCI Card has also been launched today. He said that the initial problems faced in the OCI system have been resolved in this new system, and it will bring great convenience to more than 50 lakh OCI cardholders. After 20 years, when a new passport is issued, there will be no need to re-issue the OCI booklet, and the cardholder’s registration number will also become unique. Moreover, with the digital OCI card, the problem of losing or damaging documents will be eliminated, and cardholders will be able to carry out real-time verification themselves.