Church’s opposition to FCRA Bill triggers political storm in Kerala

The Catholic Church’s strident opposition to the Centre’s bid to table the contentious Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act Amendment Bill, 2026 (FCRA) in Parliament on Wednesday has roiled Kerala politics in the run-up to the Assembly election and put the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the State on the defensive.

The BJP, which has zealously sought to make inroads into the Christian community, a significant electoral bloc in Kerala, went into firefighting mode. The party’s Kerala president, Rajiv Chandrasekhar, told a hastily convened press conference in Thiruvananthapuram that the Union government would factor in the Church’s reservations about the Bill before tabling the proposed law in Parliament.

Mr. Chandrasekhar’s statement came shortly after Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju announced the postponement of the Bill, following a bipartisan protest by MPs from Kerala outside the House. 

The Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC) demand that the Union government refer the contentious Bill to the Parliamentary Subject Committee on Home Affairs also appeared to have caused the BJP to backpedal. 

The apex Church body has also petitioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to pass the controversial law without detailed discussions in the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament and in the public domain. The KCBC has mooted public hearings on the proposed law. 

The KCBC deputy secretary general, Father Thomas Tharayil, termed the amendment to the original law unconstitutional, superfluous, and draconian. He said the Bill sought to grant the bureaucracy untrammelled authority to take over and administer charitable institutions, citing the slightest contravention of the law as a pretext. 

Father Tharayil noted that the Centre was not renewing the FCRA accounts of voluntary and charitable organisations, including those run by the Catholic Church. 

Muslim organisations

Various Muslim social and educational organisations in Kerala have shared the same concern and protested against the cancellation of their FCRA licences, raising the spectre of the shutdown of hospitals, schools, and orphanages that cater to society. Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader E.T. Muhammad Basheer, MP, termed the Bill patently anti-minority and unwarranted.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan noted that a Union Minister of State from Kerala, who is contesting the Assembly election (George Kurien), had “obsequiously” defended the Sangh Parivar-inspired Bill that seeks to strike at the root of Christian and Muslim charitable institutions, including hospitals and schools, which provide affordable medical care and education to common folk, cutting across caste and communal lines in the State. He termed the BJP a political “shapeshifting apparition”, whose “cake and flower diplomacy” towards Church leaders smacked of duplicity. 

AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal flagged a conspiracy in the BJP’s bid to muscle the controversial Bill through Parliament without discussion at a time when most Opposition members were occupied with the Assembly elections in their respective States.