PM-CARES Fund collected nearly ₹11,000 crore in first year

The PM-CARES Fund, created in 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, collected ₹10,990 crore in its first year till March 2021, and utilised ₹3,976 crore, or 36.17% of the money for various relief and capacity building measures, according to an audited statement posted on its website on Monday.

The fund was established to collect donations for emergencies (beyond natural disasters), such as the Covid outbreak. The Prime Minister is its ex-officio chairperson, and all contributions are fully exempt from Income Tax.

The statement showed that, in its first year of operation, fund was left with ₹7,014 crore remaining on the books as unused money.

Of the money spent, the maximum went towards procuring Covid-19 vaccine doses -- ₹1,392 crore (35%) to buy 66 million shots. A total of ₹1,311 crore (33%) was used to buy 50,000 “made in India” ventilators, and ₹1,000 crore was disbursed to states and Union territories (UTs) for the welfare of migrants.

According to the statement, another ₹201 crore was used to install 162 pressure swing adsorption (PSA) medical oxygen generation plants inside public health facilities across the country, and about ₹50 crore on setting up 16 RT-PCR testing labs in nine states and UTs as well as two 500-bed makeshift Covid-19 hospitals in Muzzafarpur and Patna. A sum of ₹20 crore was also given to two autonomous institute laboratories under the department of biotechnology for upgrading them as central drug laboratories (CDLs) for testing batches of Covid-19 vaccines.

While the opening balance of the fund in 2020 was ₹3,077 crore, it received ₹7,679 crore in donations by March, 2021, apart from an interest of ₹235 crore earned on the principal amount.

On September 23, last year, The Union government and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) told the Delhi high court that the PM-CARES Fund cannot be brought under the ambit of Right to Information (RTI) Act because it’s not a public authority, and nor can it be listed as a body of the State.

The Centre’s response was to pleas seeking to know the legal status of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES). One of the pleas by lawyer Samyak Gangwal sought to declare the PM CARES Fund a “State” under the Constitution to ensure transparency in its functioning. His other petition has sought that PM Cares be brought under RTI as a “public authority”.

In a petiton filed before the court in the Centre said: “The PM-CARES Fund comprises voluntary donations made by individuals and institutions and is not a part of business or function of the central government in any manner. PM-CARES Fund is not a part of any government scheme or business of the central government and being a public trust, it is also not subject to audit of Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

“…that PM CARES Fund is not a ‘public authority’ under the ambit of Section 2(h) of the RTI Act and therefore the present petition is liable to be dismissed,” the Centre said in its affidavit submitted on September 14, 2020. It added that there is no control of either the central government or any state government/s, either direct or indirect, in functioning of the Trust in any manner whatsoever.”

The matter is pending before the court.