Updated: September 22, 2020 10:50:52 am
The PMNRF had an unused corpus of Rs 3,800.44 crore as of 2019. Despite this, Modi established the PM CARES fund and solicited donations for it.
AFTER PUBLIC sector companies, a wide range of educational institutions, from Navodaya schools for rural students to IIT, IIM and central universities, have jointly contributed Rs 21.81 crore to the Citizen Aid and Assistance fund in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) from the Prime Minister, mainly from staff salaries, RTI records accessed by The Indian Express program.
The Prime Minister’s Office, which administers the fund, has refused to provide details of the contributions received, saying that PM CARES “is not a public authority in the field of … the RTI Act.”
The fund was created after the Covid outbreak and had a corpus of Rs 3,076.62 crore on March 31, 2020, just four days after launch, of which Rs 3,075.85 crore were listed as “voluntary contributions”, according to its official Web site.
Read: Mahua Moitra assumes PM CARES: 70% corpus of 38 PSU donations
August 19 The Indian Express reported that 38 UPMs used their Corporate Social Responsibility funds to jointly contribute more than Rs 2,105 million. But for several educational institutions (see table), the “voluntary contributions” came from the salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff and, in some cases, even of retirees and students.
Consider some of the key contributors from the 82 educational institutions and top industry organizations that responded to RTI requests from The Indian Express:
Navoday Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS) alone contributed Rs 7.48 crore, with an “employee donation” at its headquarters and eight regional offices. The NVS manages more than 600 Navodaya schools in rural areas.
📌11 central universities contributed Rs 3.39 crore. Among them, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) topped with Rs 1.33 crore followed by Banaras Hindu University (BHU) with over Rs 1.14 crore and Delhi-based Central Sanskrit University (CSU) with Rs 27.38 lakh.
CSU Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) RG Murli Krishnan replied that while Rs 19.04 lakh was from the “Sansthan contribution”, the rest was from the “Adarsh contribution”, without providing any details. BHU said that “no … contribution is made more than the salary of BHU employees.” AMU said the contributions come from the salaries of its employees.
Read: ‘PM-CARES received Rs 3,076 crore in 5 days’: Why not reveal the names of the donors, asks Chidambaram to the government?
📌20 IIT contributed Rs 5.47 crore. IIT-Kharagpur exceeded by more than Rs 1 crore, including Rs 36.22 lakh from “other sources”, Rs 89,184 from “pensioners” and the rest from contributions from teaching and non-teaching staff.
In IIT-Kanpur’s contribution of Rs 47.71 lakh, Rs 15 lakh came from retirees, Rs 36,800 from students and other staff. IIT-Roorkee contributed more than Rs 59.45 lakh, of which Rs 4,226 came from the Sponsored Industry and Research Consulting (SRIC) office and the rest of the staff.
📌Kozhikode (Rs 33.53 lakh) topped the list of 10 IIMs that together contributed more than Rs 66 lakh. IIM-Ahmedabad contributed more than Rs 11.59 lakh, followed by IIM-Indore (Rs 6.91 lakh) and IIM-Kolkata (Rs 4.56 lakh). Apart from a 25 lakh rupee contribution from the IIM-Kozhikode “Corpus fund”, the remainder came from staff.
📌9 NIT totaled Rs 1.01 crore, with MANIT-Bhopal at the top with Rs 21.75 lakh, followed by NIT-Rourkela (Rs 19.36 lakh), NIT-Durgapur (Rs 13.72 lakh) and NIT-Calicut (Rs 12.94 lakh). All contributions came from employees.
📌Among the major science institutes, IISc-Bangalore contributed 25.64 lakh rupees, and seven IISERs together donated 45.79 lakh rupees.
📌From other key institutions, NCERT contributed Rs 35.22 lakh, AICTE Rs 13.80 lakh and UGC Rs 7.41 lakh.
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