New Delhi: Less than ten per cent of over 30 lakh NGOs functioning across the country have submitted their returns or their balance sheets and other financial details to the authorities, CBI has informed the Supreme Court.
The dismal picture was presented by the CBI to the apex court on the basis of the income-expenditure statement of a total of 30,81,873 NGOs in 26 states and seven Union Territories.
A fresh affidavit by CBI maintained that approximately 9.33 per cent of the registered NGOs met the criteria of filing the returns.
The latest report by the agency came eight months after the last affidavit filed in January when it had submitted that out of 23,95,579 NGOs in 21 states, approximately 2,43,955 of them had filed their balance sheets with the authorities and, in seven UTs, of the 73,213 NGOs, only 50 had submitted their returns.
At that time, only 10.24 percent of the registered NGOs in the country had complied with the prerequisite of providing balance sheets and other financial details.
When the matter came for hearing today before a bench of Chief Justice H L Dattu and Justice Amitava Roy, CBI said it would require another couple of months to compile all the information as it was expecting more information from some state governments.
The CBI asked the bench to pass some order to the governments of Karnataka, Odisha and Telangana to furnish all the information as per previous directions.
It said that out of the total 30,81,873 NGOs, 290873 have filed their annual returns and Karnataka, Odisha and Telangana have so far only provided the names and number of the voluntary bodies registered in the respective states without furnishing information about the balance-sheets.
The CBI said it has received complete informations from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Jharkhand, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim,Tripura, Kerala, Punjab, Maharashtra, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and all the seven union territories Andaman & Nicobar, Pondicherry, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep, Dadar and Nagar Havali and UT of Delhi.
The government had earlier said that the NGOs would not be eligible for any grant unless they complied with the condition of filing statements of income and expenditure of last three years.
The apex court had expanded the scope of the PIL which was filed in 2011 by advocate M L Sharma against an NGO, Hind Swaraj Trust, run by anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare.
The PIL had sought probe into alleged embezzlement of funds.
