The Centre has evicted Ford Foundation from the Lodhi Estate premises that it had been operating from since the 1960s, and allotted the space to two India-led international initiatives, has learnt.

The Land and Development Office of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) had initiated eviction proceedings against Ford Foundation in 2025, after its lease for the property at 55, Lodhi Estate, ended, officials said. They said that since the foundation vacated the premises, no “forceful eviction” was carried out.

According to sources aware of the development, the foundation is learnt to have moved out in February this year, updating its office address from 55, Lodhi Estate, to the current address, Level 8, DLF Centre, Sansad Marg, on its website in March.

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Ford Foundation did not respond to an email seeking comment. Its representatives remained unavailable when reached on phone and during a visit to its Delhi office. The MoHUA, too, did not respond to a request for comment.

On Monday, the Directorate of Estates, under the MoHUA, allotted space on the ground floor and first floor of what used to be the Ford Foundation office to the International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) and Global Biofuels Alliance.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the IBCA, a multi-country and multi-agency coalition, in 2023. According to its website, it is currently functioning from a house in the Capital’s Shanti Niketan area. The Global Biofuels Alliance was launched by Modi in the presence of world leaders during the New Delhi Leaders’ Summit, as part of the G20 Summit in 2023. Its office is currently at Sanrakshan Bhawan, Bhikaji Cama Place, in South Delhi.

The Ford Foundation Headquarters at Lodhi Estate was designed by American architect Joseph Stein, who also designed iconic post-Independence buildings in Delhi like the India Habitat Centre and India International Centre. The Ford Foundation has been located at the 55, Lodhi Estate, complex since the 1960s. The premises have also been home to the United Nations and its agencies that continue to occupy parts of it today.

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The Ford Foundation has been closely involved in several key Union and State government schemes since Independence, including the Five Year Plans, agriculture and education programmes.

“The Ford Foundation established its office in New Delhi in 1952, at the invitation of the Government of India. Since inception, we have partnered with the country to meet key development priorities and aspirations. In the early decades post Independence, the foundation prioritised support for setting up the country’s leading research, academic, and professional management institutions,” its website says.

Among the institutions given “foundational grants” by the Ford Foundation, according to its website, are the Indian Institutes of Management at Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata.

“The foundation also provided early support for research to the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, and foundational support to the Indian Institute of Public Administration and the Punjab Agricultural University…We have also supported many of India’s flagship socio-economic development initiatives like the Community Development program in the 1950s, the Intensive Agricultural Districts Program, and the beginning of the Green Revolution in the 1960s as well as the self-help group movement,” the website says.

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As of now, the foundation says, its focus is “inclusive and women-led development”. While more recent data was not available, the last annual report available on the foundation’s website, for 2012, shows it made grants of $13.51 million in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. According to the foundation’s financial statement for the year ending December 31, 2025, it had approved grants of $773 million globally.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had placed Ford Foundation on a watchlist in 2015, after the Gujarat government alleged that the foundation was funding “anti-India” activities of Sabrang Trust and Citizens for Justice and Peace, the NGOs of activist Teesta Setalvad. The MHA had placed the foundation in the “prior approval category”, meaning that all funds given by it to Indian organisations would have to be first cleared by the government. In March 2016, ahead of Modi’s visit to the United States, the MHA removed the foundation from the list.