FCRA Bill will be passed after addressing Church concerns: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) Amendment Bill will be passed in Parliament only after allaying the apprehensions raised by various Christian denominations, BJP State president Rajeev Chandrasekhar said here on Wednesday.

Speaking to mediapersons, Mr. Chandrasekhar said that he had discussed the proposed Bill with various church leaders over the last three days. However, there still seemed to be a lot of apprehension, following which he made a recommendation to the Home Minister on Tuesday that it would be better to pass the Bill after clearing the air, Mr. Chandrasekhar said.

He said that it was clear that the FCRA Bill was not about any particular community and that he failed to understand why the Opposition and the media was harping on about religious minorities. None can deny the fact that the FCRA was being misused and that money laundering was rampant in the country, he said .

The CPI(M) and the Congress had no positive messages for voters in the Assembly elections, instead using allegations of a “deal” and FCRA to distract from the BJP’s development agenda for the State he said.

Mr. Chandrasekhar said the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has presented a strong alternative to the UDF and LDF and that the coalition’s manifesto released on Tuesday was not just a document but a vision for the economic re-development of Kerala.

“It is our appeal to the people to give us a chance this time so that we can give them a new and refreshing economic, social and political perspective, something totally different from what the UDF and LDF has been dishing out over the last several decades,” Mr. Chandrasekhar said.

The BJP’s focus for Kerala would be on bringing back investments, renewing employment opportunities, improving the quality of life of people and more than anything, re-gaining the self-sustainability of the State, whose debt had mounted to over ₹6 lakh crore, he added.

Mr. Chandrasekhar stated that the NDA promises to secure AIIMS for the State if given a chance at power. He blamed the State government for its failure to complete land acquisition for the AIIMS project, and said it was the lack of efficiency of the State government that AIIMS had failed to materialise in Kerala.

Mr. Chandrasekhar said that while clamouring for AIIMS on one side, the State government had turned its face away from a ₹550 crore project to establish a teaching and research hospital under ESI Corporation at Kollam, a project that the BJP’s State leadership had intervened in a big way to bring to Kerala.