New Delhi : Delhi has over 67,000 registered NGOs as of 2010 yet not one has submitted annual returns to the Government, the CBI informed the Supreme Court on Tuesday in its latest status report. Submitting information on 24.68 lakh registered NGOs received from 21 States and seven Union Territories following a court order, the CBI told a Bench headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu that only 2.44 lakh NGOs have deposited balance sheet of income and expenditure annually to the Registrar of Societies as required by the Societies Registration Act.Among the UTs, only 50 out of 73,213 NGOs follow the rulebook. Delhi has the major share in it with 67,529 registered till about five years back. Though this figure is bound to have increased, Delhi in its reply to CBI has informed that reporting of accounts is not mandatory. Chandigarh too has 3,981 NGOs registered with it but has no record of accounts maintained by any of them.
The Bench, also comprising Justice AK Sikri, allowed Additional Solicitor General (ASG) PS Patwalia to file the report and posted the matter in March for detailed hearing. In view of the large scale violations by NGOs, the Union Government is planning to make it compulsory for NGOs to submit three years; balance sheet as a condition for release of Central grants.
Even the court had wished to know why such NGOs are allowed to operate that fail to submit accounts. The court found out that except for Telangana, all States have cooperated in the exercise launched by court on a PIL filed by advocate ML Sharma raising questions on operation of certain NGOs in Maharashtra. The States of Assam, Rajasthan, Kerala and Punjab are the most notorious as none among the lakhs of NGOs registered there have accounts maintained with the Registrar of Societies.
Source : The Pioneer