New Delhi: The Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund, which was set up in March 2020 to deal with emergency or distress situations, accumulated a corpus of Rs 8,452 crore by the end of the financial year 2024-25, even as just Rs 87 lakh was spent, audit reports released by the fund show.
The fund, which receives domestic and foreign donations, was initially being utilised for ventilators, ICU beds, procurement of liquid oxygen equipment, welfare of migrants, procurement of Covid-19 medicines, and funding of laboratories for test and release of batches of vaccines, among other things.
However, since the pandemic, in FY 2023-24 and 2024-25, the corpus—that too a small part of it—has been used only for the PM CARES for Children Scheme. While Rs 15 crore was utilised for PM CARES for Children in 2023-24, only Rs 87 lakh was utilised in 2024-25.
Moreover, the corpus has been earning interest. A significant amount of the corpus—Rs 6,641 crore—has been parked in fixed deposits. Before 2024-25, the funds were parked only in savings bank accounts. The shift, implemented in 2023-24, led to the fund earning Rs 469 crore in interest on fixed deposits in FY 2024-25, and Rs 5.76 crore interest on savings bank accounts.
As per the audit statement, the fund received domestic donations of Rs 479 crore, and Rs 92 lakh in foreign donations in 2024-25.
The fund was established in March 2020. According to the official website of the fund, it was set up as a public charitable trust, keeping in mind the need for a dedicated fund for any kind of emergency or distress situation, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected.
The Prime Minister is the ex-officio chairman of the fund and the Minister of Defence, Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Finance, Government of India are ex-officio trustees of the fund.
The disclosures after the audit are facing criticism, with Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convenor of National Campaign for People’s Right to Information and founding member of Satark Nagrik Sangathan saying, “A fund set up to help citizens during disasters, which has accumulated thousands of crores (including from foreign sources), is shrouded in secrecy. Still no information available on sources of funds. The PMCARES Fund continues to evade public scrutiny by refusing to submit itself to the RTI Act.”
Among other things, Bhardwaj pointed out that Rs 324 crore was refunded by implementing agencies. “…but no information on what these payments were for and why these were refunded? Which agency refunded? Were refunds done to evade accountability for faulty equipment?” she asked.
Bhardwaj also pointed out that while the 1-page report mentions “accompanying notes to the financial statements 1 to 16”, these notes have not been made public.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: PM CARES Fund a charitable trust, not ‘public authority’ under RTI: PMO informs Delhi HC