Indira Jaising's NGO 'Lawyers' Collective' has been barred from receiving foreign funds for six months and its license has been suspended by the Home Ministry for alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act or FCRA.

Ms Jaising, was an Additional Solicitor General in the Congress-led UPA government, and has called the government order an act of  "vindictiveness" and "nothing but an attempt to intimidate". "Those who question the government's policies are targeted. It is a pattern," she said.

"This is nothing but gross misuse of FCRA which is being used to suppress dissent," Lawyers' Collective has said in a statement. “The allegation against Jaising was based on the footing that she was a government servant, who was prohibited from receiving FC under the FCRA. However, she was a public servant and not a government servant, on whom there was no bar to receive FC,” the statement added.

Challenging the order, the NGO stated that all the foreign contributions received by them were spent “for the purposes received and accounted for”.

The ministry has questioned Ms Jaising being paid remuneration "for undisclosed purposes" by the NGO from the foreign funds, while she functioned as Additional Solicitor, and called it a "misuse and diversion of funds".

The notice sent to the NGO said that during the course of adjudication whereby defence, explanations, documents were submitted by the NGO, “we have arrived at a prima facie conclusion” that the Association was in violation of various provisions of FCRA.

"The law states that a public servant cannot accept foreign funding...I wasn't ever a government servant, an additional solicitor general is not a government servant. Secondly, none of our funders have complained that the funds that they gave us were not used for the purpose for which they were meant," Ms Jaisingh said.

By Premji