New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday launched a new version of the FCRA portal and e-OCI Card and said they will enhance facilities for citizens and resolve the difficulties faced by those receiving foreign donations through the portal.
The Home Minister said that in recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of applications and in the flow of donations.
He asserted that “due to FCRA law, monitoring on foreign contributions coming with wrong intentions will increase”.
Speaking on the occasion, the Home Minister said that before 2014, the FCRA system was entangled in files and procedures and lacked 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 Narendra Modi in 2014, the system was strengthened.
The Home Minister said that after taking over, Prime Minister Modi had said that the government would work on the principle of ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’.
“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,” the Home Minister said.
He said both the new initiatives launched today will prove to be highly beneficial in increasing the convenience of citizens.
Shah said they will enhance facilities for citizens and, in particular, will resolve the difficulties faced by those receiving donations through the FCRA portal.
“The renewal of the FCRA portal today will greatly enhance ease of operations for organisations,” he said.
Keeping this in view, reducing paperwork and ensuring effective, real-time monitoring of foreign contributions are very important for the country’s security, he said.
Shah said that with the launch of this new system, the need to physically submit 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 said.
Shah said 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, he said.
The Home Minister said that the initial problems faced in the OCI system have been resolved in this new system through the new e-OCI 2.0 card, 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,” he said.
