Union Home Minister Amit Shah Launches FCRA 2.0 Portal and e-OCI Card

📌 Summary:

• Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah launched the FCRA 2.0 Portal and the e-OCI Card in New Delhi
• FCRA 2.0 reduces paperwork, speeds up processing of applications and enables real-time monitoring of foreign contributions; physical submission of documents is eliminated
• Features: e-Sign-based authentication, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and NGO Darpan bank-account integration; all data hosted on 'MeghRaj' (Government Cloud) to reduce data-theft risk
• Forthcoming: an FCRA mobile app, an AI-powered chatbot and a dedicated online dashboard for banks
• e-OCI Card launched to benefit more than 50 lakh OCI cardholders; both initiatives framed under "Minimum Government, Maximum Governance"

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS2 (regulation of NGOs and foreign funding, e-governance, transparency and national security); GS2 (diaspora - OCI).

📝 Prelims Facts:

• FCRA = Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act; new portal launched as "FCRA 2.0"
• FCRA data to be hosted on 'MeghRaj' (GI Cloud)
• e-OCI Card to benefit 50 lakh+ Overseas Citizen of India cardholders
• Launched by the Ministry of Home Affairs

🔑 Key Term: FCRA - the law regulating the acceptance and utilisation of foreign contributions by persons/associations to safeguard national interest.