An Income Tax office in Pune, India. Image via Wikimedia Commons by Universalashic. CC BY-SA 3.0.
An Income Tax office in Pune, India. Image via Wikimedia Commons by Universalashic. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Merely a few months after the Constitution of India came into effect in 1949, the nation's apex court handed down a significant verdict on free speech in the case of Romesh Thappar vs. The State of Madras on May 26, 1950. There, the court noted that unless a law restricting freedom of speech and expression was directed solely at undermining the security of the State, such a law could not be used to restrict speech. The court said “freedom of speech and expression includes freedom of propagation of ideas, and that freedom is ensured by the freedom of circulation.”
Fast forward to 2025, and even though the Romesh Thappar judgment still holds precedential value today, the spirit of the ruling has significantly diminished. As of this writing, the ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been actively using novel and creative legal means to throttle free speech on a routine basis. A recent victim of this exercise was The Reporters’ Collective (TRC), an investigative journalism outlet whose nonprofit status was allegedly cancelled by the Income Tax (IT) Department — a significant central government agency that comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance.
A statement published by The Reporters’ Collective on January 28, 2025, reads in part:
We have consistently worked with the public purpose as a non-profit and in adherence to all Indian laws, without fear or favor.
The order cancelling our non-profit status severely impairs our ability to do our work and worsens the conditions for independent, public-purposed journalism in the country.
But what caused this purported cancellation, and what are its implications?
A pattern of abuse
Even though TRC's founding editor, Nitin Sethi, has refused to comment on these developments, others speculate that, if true, this cancellation of status has less to do with the IT Department’s official — and patently bizarre — position that journalism does not serve a “public purpose,” and possibly more to do with the fact that this media platform regularly publishes multi-part, multi-media reports critical of the ruling BJP.
Former Union Finance Minister and Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament from the Indian National Congress (India’s leading opposition party), P. Chidambaram, called this development an assault on the “building block of freedom.”
One more building block of freedom was knocked down today when the Income Tax department canceled the non-profit status of Reporters’ Collective
The official reason given is “journalism does not serve any public purpose”
The true reason is that independent journalism does not…
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) January 28, 2025
Jawhar Sircar, former Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament, directly blamed Prime Minister Modi for this:
Modi unleashes his Income Tax hounds to terrorise the media that exposes his corruption and highhandedness!
We live in a Reign of Terror. https://t.co/YiIb3FzjLE
— Jawhar Sircar (@jawharsircar) January 28, 2025
It should be noted that this is not the first time the IT Department has cracked down on civil society groups and media platforms. In 2022, the IT Department began targeting five key civil society groups, alleging mismanagement of funds under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, or the “FCRA Act.” These groups include the think tank Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and the international NGO Oxfam. By 2024, their FCRA licenses were canceled, and they were compelled to take legal action to seek relief — a process that is fraught with uncertainty. In the meantime, the very ability of these NGOs to function has been crippled. Even opposition politicians who are critical of the BJP are not spared by central agencies. According to a report by the English-language daily The National Herald:
Ever since Modi government has come to power, every leader who has opposed BJP or posed a threat to its interests has seen central agencies at his/her door.
This continued (mis)use of government power to target civil society groups, opposition leaders, and media platforms suggests a deeply concerning trend in how governmental agencies are increasingly weaponized to suppress dissent in the country.
The role of the courts
On January 18, 2024, a division bench of the Delhi High Court stayed the order passed by the IT Department that had cancelled the tax exemption status of Oxfam India and CARE India. However, it did so on technical grounds, aligning itself with an earlier order in favor of CPR, which was passed by a different bench of the same court on August 25, 2023. In the Oxfam India and CARE India case, the court reasoned that, due to the similarity of the two cases, the nature of the interim orders to be granted to these NGOs should be consistent. However, these orders were only interim in nature, meaning they would remain in effect only as long as certain conditions were met. Following additional hearings and proceedings, fresh orders may be passed, and the final outcome of the case could very well be different from the temporary relief granted at that stage.
While the brief respite provided by the Delhi High Court could undoubtedly be seen as a small victory for the organizations involved, it still does not address the fundamental concerns surrounding the growing regulatory control over civil society groups. On April 8, 2022, the Supreme Court of India delivered a significant verdict where it held that various amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), which inhibited NGOs’ ability to access foreign funds, were constitutional. The court stated that the amendments were necessary for regulating the inflow and utilization of foreign contributions in a manner that aligned with national interests. The court said in that verdict:
We find force in the argument that it had become necessary for Parliament to step in and provide a stringent regime for effectively regulating the inflow and utilization of foreign contributions. Hence, there had been a legitimate goal for amending the subject provisions of acceptance of funds through one channel.
Citing concerns related to “national security,” “public order,” and purported threats to the “sovereignty of the nation,” the court ruled that parliament could limit NGOs’ access to foreign funds simply because parliament felt threatened by the influx of foreign funds into NGOs’ coffers. Ironically, the court remained silent on the chilling effect such restrictions placed on smaller NGOs’ ability to sustain their operations. Therefore, the government’s perception of insecurity outweighed the tangible, real-world challenges faced by NGOs struggling to operate under these restrictive conditions in the court’s eyes.
It remains uncertain how Indian courts will respond to TRC’s claim should they decide to take legal action against the IT Department. While the Delhi High Court's recent orders offer some signs of hope, the broader trend of regulatory overreach by the government and the lack of effective judicial oversight makes the operating environment increasingly precarious. Whatever is said and done, this is definitely not the last we will hear of the IT Department's actions against civil society groups, NGOs, and opposition parties in India.