Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday launched the upgraded Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) portal and the new FCRAe-OCI Card, saying the initiatives will improve citizen services, simplify processes for organisations receiving foreign contributions and strengthen the monitoring framework for foreign donations.
Addressing the launch event, Shah said there has been a significant rise in both the number of applications and the volume of foreign contributions in recent years, making it essential to modernise the system with greater transparency and technological integration. He asserted that the strengthened FCRA framework would enhance oversight of foreign funds entering the country with "wrong intentions".
"Due to the FCRA law, monitoring on foreign contributions coming with wrong intentions will increase," Shah said. Reflecting on the evolution of the FCRA mechanism, the Home Minister said that before 2014, the system was heavily dependent on paperwork, procedural delays and manual processes, with limited oversight despite its importance for national security and governance.
He said after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office in 2014, the government undertook comprehensive reforms to make the system more transparent, efficient and technology-driven. Shah recalled that Prime Minister Modi had adopted the principle of "Minimum Government, Maximum Governance," with an emphasis on leveraging technology to improve public service delivery.
"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.
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He said both the upgraded FCRA portal and the e-OCI Card would significantly improve convenience for users while making administrative processes faster and more secure.
According to Shah, the revamped FCRA portal will particularly address several operational issues faced by organisations receiving foreign donations. "The renewal of the FCRA portal today will greatly enhance ease of operations for organisations," he said. He stressed that reducing paperwork while enabling effective, real-time monitoring of foreign contributions is essential from both governance and national security perspectives.
With the launch of the upgraded portal, organisations will no longer need to submit physical documents, as several digital features have now been integrated into the system. "Facilities such as e-Sign-based authentication, OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and the NGO Darpan bank account integration system will be ensured," Shah said. He added that hosting the entire system on the government's MeghRaj cloud platform would significantly reduce the risk of data theft and strengthen data security.
The Home Minister also announced that additional digital services—including an FCRA mobile application, an AI-powered chatbot and a dedicated online dashboard for banks—will be introduced in the coming months to further improve the user experience.
Speaking about the new e-OCI Card, Shah said the upgraded system resolves many of the long-standing issues faced by Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholders and will benefit more than 50 lakh OCI holders worldwide.
He said that under the new e-OCI 2.0 system, cardholders will no longer be required to obtain a fresh OCI booklet after renewing their passport following a period of 20 years. Each cardholder will also receive a unique registration number, simplifying identification and verification.
"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," Shah said.
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