PM CARES Fund’s idle Rs 8,452 cr sparks calls for greater accountability

The Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund on Tuesday, 18 August, released an audited statement of receipts and expenditure, for the financial years 2023-24 and 2024-2025. This first report since the last disclosure for the financial year 2022-23 covers a single page and has been uploaded on the Fund’s website. The audited account for the year 2025-26 is yet to be uploaded.

The ‘private’ Fund operating under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) claimed that as of March 2025, funds had grown to Rs 8,452 crore of which 80 per cent or Rs 6,641 crore is in fixed deposits in banks, earning an interest of Rs 450 crore. The statement for FY 2024-25 reveals income of over Rs 1,200 crore via donations and interests on deposits during the year. Against this, a sum of Rs 87 lakh is recorded as expenditure for the year ending 31 March 2025. The balance as on 31 March is Rs 8,452 crore.

It is hard to miss that the audited statement comes days after a Cockroach Janta Party spokesperson took a swipe at the PM CARES Fund when he was queried on CJP's source of funds.

As per the uploaded statement of accounts, only 0.01 per cent of the available funds were utilised, activist Anjali Bhardwaj has pointed out. Why are such large sums of money being kept idle? she asked. She also pointed out in a post on X that Rs 324 crore has been shown as refunds from implementing agencies but there is no information on what they were meant for and why they were refunded. “Were refunds done to evade accountability for faulty equipment,” she asked.

The website pmcares.gov.in informs us that the 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. The Prime Minister nominated Justice K.T. Thomas (retd.) and Kariya Munda as two trustees.

The opaque PMCARES Fund was created in March 2020 to ostensibly deal with the COVID pandemic, despite the existence of the Prime Minister’s National Disaster Relief Fund. It was initially claimed to being set up by the government and public sector undertakings and government employees were encouraged to donate liberally. Being In the first five days Rs 3,000 crore was collected. Even CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funds created out of the profit earned by companies were redirected to PMCARES.

The Fund, however, began dodging information sought under Right to Information and soon claimed it was a ‘private fund’ and, hence, outside the purview of the RTI Act. It also evaded audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on these grounds with the trustees claiming that it was audited by ‘independent chartered accountants’ selected by the trustees.

The Fund has claimed that the corpus is at its highest level since 2020 and that is being built to meet future emergencies on the scale of COVID. The emergencies to be covered have been left unanswered. What also remains unanswered is on what kind of emergency were Rs 87 lakh spent in 2025?

In the last six years PMCARES Fund has come under serious scrutiny. A PIL, dismissed by the Supreme Court, had questioned the setting up of the Fund and pointed out that the “trust has not been created by Parliament/state legislature, nor approved by the President of India and there is no ordinance/gazette notification in this regard”. Alleging that the PM CARES Fund was shrouded in secrecy, the Opposition had asked why it had no in-built system of transparency and accountability and why it was not subjected to any audit or covered under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, despite 60 per cent of its funds coming from public sector undertakings (PSUs).

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi had then said that a public fund that gets donations to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore should come under the ambit of RTI and show accountability. He pointed out that 60 per cent of the total contributions to the PM CARES Fund had come from government-run and government-owned firms, including the ONGC, the NTPC and the IOC. “The ‘C’ in PM CARES stands for coercion, chaos, confusion and corruption,” he had said.

While one of the reasons why it was kept out of accountability parameters was on the ground that it did not receive any budgetary support from the government, how come government-owned/controlled Navratna and mini Ratna PSUs were the principal donors, he had asked. There is no clarity on whether the contributors and donors are now different and who are they.

Eyebrows were also raised when the PM CARES Fund received exemption from all provisions meant to regulate foreign donations, although it does not seem to meet the pre-condition of being a body established and owned by the government whose accounts are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). Responding to an RTI query, the Home Ministry had replied it had to “seek the consent” of PM CARES before giving out the information, as it would be considered a “third party” as per the RTI Act. It also invoked the clause that allows information to be denied if it is held as part of a fiduciary relationship.