- Billed as a “dedicated fund with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency and provide relief to the affected”, PM CARES spent just Rs 3,976 crore in the first year of its operation.
Issues surrounding the fund and its functioning
PM CARES has been under a cloud of suspicion ever since it was announced, with opposition parties demanding transparency over the handling of the funds.
About PM-CARES Motive
The Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund was set up to accept donations and provide relief during the Covid-19 pandemic, and other similar emergencies.
PM-CARES Fund Brief details-
- PM-CARES was set up as a public charitable trust with the trust deed registered on March 27, 2020.
- It can avail donations from the foreign contribution and donations to fund can also avail 100% tax exemption.
- PM-CARES is different from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF).
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Who administers the fund?
Prime Minister is the ex-officio Chairman of the PM CARES Fund and Minister of Defence, Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Finance, Government of India are ex-officio Trustees of the Fund.
In 2021, the Delhi High Court was informed that the PM CARES Fund is not a Government of India fund and that the amount collected by it does not go to the Consolidated Fund of India.The Fund was established on March 27, 2020 and collected ₹3,076 crore — including an initial corpus, foreign and domestic contributions, and interest — within the first five days of its existence, before the end of the 2019-20 financial year. In the financial year 2020-21, it received voluntary contributions from domestic donors to the tune of ₹7,184 crore and foreign contributions amounting to ₹494 crore. Along with interest, and a ₹25 lakh refund of unspent balance from the National Disaster Management Authority, the Fund’s total receipts for the year amounted to ₹7,193 crore.
On the expenditure side, the largest disbursal of ₹1,393 crore went to purchase 6.6 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Another ₹1,311 crore was used to buy 50,000 Made in India ventilators for use in Central and State government hospitals. doctors and hospitals in several States have raised concerns about the quality of some of these ventilators, with others lying idle due to technical issues.
Other measures to improve health infrastructure included ₹201 crore spent on installing and operationalising 162 Pressure Swing Adsorption medical oxygen generation plants inside public health facilities, and ₹50 crore to establish two makeshift COVID hospitals in Muzaffarnagar and Patna with 500 beds each, and to set up 16 RT-PCR testing labs in nine States and Union Territories.
Over ₹20 crore was used to upgrade two autonomous institute laboratories under the Department of Biotechnology as Central Drug Laboratories to test and release batches of the COVID-19 vaccine.
A sum of ₹1,000 crore was allotted to States and Union Territories for the welfare of migrants, many of whom were left stranded by lockdowns due to COVID-19.
On May 13, 2020, a press release from the Prime Minister’s Office had said funds would be allotted for vaccine development. “A vaccine against COVID-19 is the most pressing need and Indian academia, start-ups and industry have come together in cutting-edge vaccine design and development. To support the COVID-19 vaccine designers and developers, an amount of ₹100 crore will be given from PM CARES Fund as a helping hand to catalyse vaccine development, which will be utilized under the supervision of Principal Scientific Advisor,” said the statement.
However, such a sum was not allotted for this purpose according to the audited financial statement for the year.
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- Shri Narendra Modi recently paid his obeisances to Sri Madhvacharya on the occasion of Madhva Navami.
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