The Centre has given shunting orders to senior home ministry bureaucrat Bipin B Mallick who played a key role in cracking down on televangelist Zakir Naik's NGO Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) besides cancelling foreign funding licenses of several Christian charity based NGOs for being involved in activities against the national interest.

The move coming on the instructions of “competent authority” apparently has to do with the US pressure, said sources. The USA has raised the matter more than twice with India asking why Church based NGOs, especially child rights NGO Compassion International, were being targeted by the government.

Compassion International was put in the prior permission category in May last year that allows clearance of funds by the RBI on case to case basis on the instructions of the union home ministry.

Facing the heat, the Prime Minister's Office has already sought a report on the NGO along with the evidence that the Intelligence Bureau has claimed to have gathered, home ministry sources said.

Top American lawmakers on Wednesday had expressed concern over the curbs imposed on Compassion International, whose representatives appeared before a Congressional hearing seeking change in India’s policies related to foreign funding of NGOs.

Congressman Ed Royce, Chairman of the powerful House Foreign Relations Committee, had lamented that the recent efforts to regulate foreign funding and enforce taxation laws had made it impossible for them to carry out social work in India.

Though the allegations were promptly dismissed by the ministry of external affairs, as based on “limited understanding of India, its society, Constitution and laws”, the government apparently is finding ways to remove tough conditions that have been put on certain NGOs, highly placed sources said.

Late last month, the foreigner division had refused to renew the licences of 25 NGO, most of them Church based charity organisation, for indulging in activities that were inimical to the national interest.

Sources said, Mallick had little role in this as he was just following government instructions to expedite the screening of NGOs as per the Intelligence Bureau’s report.

An additional secretary in foreigner division of the union home ministry, Mallick has been asked to take charge of the disaster management division from immediate effect. The bureaucrat, a 1986-batch IAS officer of Maharashtra cadre, had taken a slew of measures in the FCRA division since he took over in July this year.

Besides, implementing e-filing of documents and completing the tedious task of going through the documentation of over 40,000 NGOs and trimming the list of abiding NGOs to about 21,000, Mallick had worked proactively on government’s instruction to cancel FCRA licenses of several NGOs or put them in tough prior permission category that fell in Intelligence Bureau’s classification of working against country’s interest.