fter blacklisting 69 NGOs from receiving foreign funds, the government is likely to take "strict" action against other NGOs against whom the Intelligence Bureau has submitted adverse reports. Officials familiar with the issue said that some of the prominent foreign funded agencies, which are under the government's scanner, were for long participating and propagating activities to "scuttle" India's development related projects especially those related to nuclear and coal.

According to officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), financial irregularities and "mala fide activism" on part of some of these blacklisted NGOs had come to the notice of the officials much before the present BJP-led NDA government came to power in May 2014, but the MHA at the time was stopped from taking action against these powerful agencies because of the proximity and the accessibility that they enjoyed with a few influential Congress leaders.

Among the 69 NGOs that were blacklisted from receiving foreign funds by the MHA last week,14 are from Andhra Pradesh, 12 from Tamil Nadu, five each from Gujarat and Orissa, four each from Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Kerala and three from Delhi. Some of these are Greenpeace International, Climate Works Foundation, Cordaid, Amnesty and ActionAid. According to MHA officials, they were fuelling protests at the ground level through local NGOs, which were acting as their front. Officials said that many mega industrial projects like Posco and Vedanta were affected by these NGOs, which had severely hampered India's economic growth. Sources also said that certain media organisations and journalists were also "helping" these NGOs to further their cause.

The MHA is particularly concerned about the situation in the Northeast, as many NGOs, which had come up in this region in the last two-three years, were carrying out disruptive activity to stall infrastructure projects under the garb of violation of human and tribal rights. Intelligence sources said that they had concrete information that showed that one such Netherlands-based NGO and its associate outfits were facilitating local protests and unrest in Manipur against oil drilling in the area.

"Local NGOs, supported by the foreign agency, have been active in staging protests against oil projects claiming that the tribals should preserve it for their own use instead of letting the government sell it to the corporate. This agency has in the past organised training session for its activists in which things like how to use GPS tracking to map oil wells, mines, dams and forests to create a database in order to facilitate local protests was taught. These sessions are mostly conducted by foreign nationals and we have concrete proof that the associate NGOs of this agency were fanning anti-India feelings and speaking out against Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which can lead to a very volatile situation in the sensitive regions of the Northeast," an official said.

Officials stated that the protest against oil extraction in the Northeast was high on the agenda of these bodies and they were also planning to internationalise the issue at various for a including the United Nations.