The Gov­ern­ment has re­moved cer­tain pow­ers from the Pres­i­dent, un­der the For­eign In­vest­ment Act, and as­signed them to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that this is be­ing done to fa­cil­i­tate large scale in­vest­ment by the US com­pa­nies, in par­tic­u­lar da­ta cen­tres, and oth­er en­ti­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with the Gov­ern­ment’s Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion pro­gramme.

The or­der, which was pub­lished in the Gazette yes­ter­day, is ti­tled the Del­e­ga­tion of Func­tions (For­eign In­vest­ment) Or­der, 2026.

Ac­cord­ing to Le­gal No­tice 833, it “del­e­gates cer­tain pres­i­den­tial pow­ers un­der the For­eign In­vest­ment Act to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Min­is­ter can now grant ex­ten­sions al­low­ing for­eign in­vestors to re­tain land ac­quired through in­her­i­tance, mort­gage fore­clo­sure or as judge­ment cred­i­tor be­yond the usu­al one year-pe­ri­od. This is a tar­get­ed del­e­ga­tion, not a gen­er­al trans­fer of all for­eign-in­vest­ment ap­provals.”

The or­der first iden­ti­fies Sec­tion 51 (1) of the In­ter­pre­ta­tion Act, which reads, "Sub­ject to sub­sec­tion (4), where a writ­ten law con­fers a func­tion on the Pres­i­dent, a Min­is­ter or a spec­i­fied pub­lic of­fi­cer, the Pres­i­dent or the Min­is­ter may by Or­der del­e­gate any oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cer or of­fi­cers to ex­er­cise the func­tion on his be­half, and there­upon, or from the date spec­i­fied in the del­e­ga­tion, the per­son or per­sons del­e­gat­ed may ex­er­cise the func­tion.”

It then in­cludes the spe­cif­ic claus­es in the For­eign In­vest­ment Act- 8 (1) (b) (c) and (d) which would em­pow­er Tan­coo to act, in lieu of the Pres­i­dent. Those claus­es are:

“8. (1) Notwith­stand­ing any oth­er pro­vi­sion of this Act, land, in­clud­ing land pre­scribed by the Min­is­ter un­der sec­tion 6(2) may be ac­quired by a for­eign in­vestor—

(b) Un­der an in­tes­ta­cy, or as a ben­e­fi­cia­ry or as an ex­ecu­tor un­der a will, for a pe­ri­od of one year from the date of the death of the tes­ta­tor or in­tes­tate, or for such ex­tend­ed time as the Pres­i­dent may grant;

(c) In pur­suance of his rights to fore­close or en­ter in­to pos­ses­sion as a mort­gagee for a pe­ri­od of one year from the ac­qui­si­tion of such land or for such ex­tend­ed time as the Pres­i­dent may grant;

(d) As a judg­ment cred­i­tor for a pe­ri­od of one year from the date of his ac­qui­si­tion of the land or for such ex­tend­ed time as the Pres­i­dent may grant."