File photo of the leader of Congress, P Chidambaram.
The fund was created with an initial corpus of Rs 2.25 lakh. PM CARES ‘”receipts and payments account” indicated that Rs 3,075.85 crore came from national voluntary contributions and Rs 39.67 lakh were foreign contributions. He has also received an interest of around 35 lakh rupees.
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In the first audit report of the PM CARES fund, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) stated that it received more than Rs 3,076 million in contributions from India and abroad during the first five days of its launch. The statement has registered donations between March 27 and 31.
The fund was created with an initial corpus of Rs 2.25 lakh. PM CARES ‘”receipts and payments account” indicated that Rs 3,075.85 crore came from national voluntary contributions and Rs 39.67 lakh were foreign contributions. He has also received an interest of around 35 lakh rupees.
The statement mentioned that the fund paid Rs 2,049 as a service tax on the Forex conversion and had a closing balance of Rs 3,076.62 crore as of March 31.
The “attached notes 1 to 6” to the audit statement have not been made public. Therefore, the names of the donors have not been released.
In a series of tweets, former finance minister and congressional leader P Chidambaram questioned why the names of “these generous donors” were not revealed.
“Why? All other NGOs or Trusts are required to disclose the names of donors who contribute more than a minimal amount. Why is PM CARES FUND exempt from this obligation,” his tweet read.
Chidambaram also tweeted, “The donee is known. The grantee’s trustees are known. Why are the trustees afraid to reveal the names of the donors?”
In April 2020, the PMO had stated that PM CARES would not be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India as the fund consisted of private donations and not public funds. The corpus was set up as a separate emergency fund from the Prime Minister to secure donations for his fight against Covid-19.
On July 11, the Center had justified the creation of the PM CARES fund by saying that the mere existence of a statutory fund under the Disaster Management Act of 2005 would not prohibit the creation of a different one that provides for voluntary donations.
The Indian Express had previously reported that public sector units such as ONGC and OIL, along with government departments, had contributed nearly Rs. Rs 2 billion to PM CARES.
The Prime Minister is the ex-officio chairman of the PM CARES fund and the Minister of Defense, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Finance are ex-officio Trustees of the Fund.
Shrikar K Pardeshi, Deputy Secretary of the PMO, signed the audit statement on behalf of the PM-CARES Fund as “Secretary”, while Hardik Shah, Private Secretary of PM Modi, signed the statement as Under Secretary of the Fund.
On May 13, Rs 3.1 billion from the PM CARES fund was allocated for the supply of 50,000 ‘Made in India’ ventilators to government hospitals for migrant workers and for the development of vaccines. Earlier this month, the PMO had said that money had also been allocated to establish two 500-bed Covid-19 hospitals in Bihar.
On August 18, the Supreme Court rejected a petition to transfer the PM CARES Fund to the National Disaster Relief Fund. Disposing of the petition, the court added that there was no need for a new national disaster relief plan for the pandemic.
Days after this decision, Chidambaram had asked why the Prime Minister and three ministers were acting as trustees of the fund if it had not been created by the central government.
Chidambaram accused the BJP government of protecting the fund from scrutiny and asked why donations to the fund are counted against CSR if it is established privately. He asked if donations to other privately established funds will also be counted against CSR.
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“Was the Fund created by the central government as concluded by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs? If not, who created the Fund and in what capacity? If the Fund was not created by the central government, why are the prime minister and three ministers acting as trustees? Who named them trustees? he asked in a series of tweets.
Chidambaram alleged that it is “very clear that the BJP government is making desperate efforts to protect the PM-CARES Fund from any kind of scrutiny.”
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