The Delhi High Court has allowed the NGO, Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust to file its annual returns under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 2010 offline, without registration with the NGO-DARPAN portal maintained by NITI Aayog, which mandatorily requires input of Aadhaar details.
The notice was issued by Justice Vibhu Bakhru on the NGO’s plea challenging the constitutional validity of a notice issued in October last year, mandating NGOs receiving foreign contributions to electronically file their returns. The notice has essentially been challenged because it makes it compulsory for the officer bearers of an NGO to have an Aadhaar number, in order to register with the NGO-DARPAN portal.
Alleging violation of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India, it contends, “…the requirement of submission of Aadhaar details, a requirement completely extraneous to the purposes of the FCRA is arbitrary, unreasonable, irrational and to the extent that persons who either do not possess Aadhaar or do not want to share their Aadhaar numbers are precluded from filing FCRA Annual Returns creates an unreasonable classification with no nexus whatsoever with the objectives of the FCRA and as such in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution of India.”
— source livelaw.in | 17 Dec 2018