Telangana: Mission Kakatiya Trust blacklisted over funding

Hyderabad: The Union Government has put the Mission Kakatiya Trust on the blacklist for not furnishing required documents under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010. The trust has been barred from receiving any funds.

This trust is the only one which is owned by the Government for raising funds from different organisations and philanthropists from across the world.

As per rules, the fund-seeking organisations have to submit annual income and expenditure statements on foreign funding but this has not been done by the Telangana State Government.

The Mission Kakatiya Trust was formed in 2015 as part of mobilisation of funds to revive the abandoned water bodies in Telangana.

The State Government also got the Centre's nod to exempt the donors under the Section 80C of the Income-Tax Act that allows tax concessions for donors.

So far, the trust had received more than Rs 40 crore as donations. Noted corporate bodies like Hetero Drugs, Gland Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma and some NRI industrialists had contributed to the trust. The State Government employees also contributed nearly Rs 8 crore to the trust.

Official sources said, "Under Mission Kakatiya, the government had revived nearly 70 per cent of the total 45,000 identified water bodies. Since 2019, the government did not earmark any specific funds to Mission Kakatiya and the donations collected from different sources were only being utilised for the purpose."

Officials said that the collection of donations was also not much for the last two years. However, the government would submit required documents to the Centre and continue the functioning of the trust in the future. In all 562 NGOs, Registered Associations and Trusts have been asked to stop receiving funds.

From Telangana, NALSAR University of Law, Andhra Mahila Sabha, Mahavir Hospital, Avadhana Saraswatha Peetham, All India Velama Association, Chiranjeevi Charitable Trust, Sharon Gospel Trust, Lanco Foundation, Arora Educational Society, Syed Salahuddin Ather Memorial Educational Society, Raj Bahadur Venkata Reddy Educational Society and Byrraju Satyanarayana Raju Foundation were among the organisations banned from receiving funds.