Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday asked Microsoft founder Bill Gates to adopt 1,000 villages affected by violence due to Left-wing extremism in Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand and make them “model villages” by focussing on sanitation and cleanliness.

Mr. Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Gates Foundation, met Mr. Singh at North Block.

The meeting comes amid the Home Ministry’s recent order to cancel the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licence of Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), a health advocacy group, majorly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).

The licence, which lets an NGO or association receive foreign funds, was cancelled days after Swadeshi Jagran Manch, the economic arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had brought out a ‘white paper’ on the BMGF’s influence in India’s health sector.

A Gates Foundation spokesperson said the cancellati