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vision for ‘accountability’. This fund has the validation by the Supreme Court
which surely not conducive for good governance.
The Bench of SC has completely agreed with the stand of the Govern-
ment that (a) PM-CARES was a “public charitable trust” to which “anyone can
contribute”, that (b) it is a “misconception” that contributions received by a pub-
lic trust such as PM-CARES could be transferred to a statutory fund such as the
NDRF, (c) the existence of PM-CARES fund to receive “voluntary donations” as
an entity separate and distinct from the NDRF.
The SC appears to have adopted technical interpretation keeping aside
the duties of ‘trust’ and trustee of PM-CARES fund. i.e., the PMO, to which thou-
sands of crores of rupees are pouring in.
Because the PM-CARES Fund is not officially a Union Government fund,
though it really is, the CAG does not have any constitutional obligation to audit
this ‘fund’. It is obvious that by adopting this route carefully, the ‘hurdle’ of
compulsory auditing is avoided.
Three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court on 18th August, 2020 also felt
that funds received into the PM-CARES Fund need not be credited to the Na-
tional Disaster Response Fund (NDRF). But COVID-19 pandemic is a disaster,
whole law is set to deal with the disaster. The Governments are using this law to
assume powers and impose penalties for defiance of guidelines or instructions to
tackle the disaster, but when it comes to accountability, it is not considered. Cre-
ating another Fund devoid of accountability, when a comprehensive law is al-
ready in place to manage such fund, comes under severe criticism.
Incidentally, this PIL was also filed by Centre for Public Interest Litiga-
tion represented by Prashant Bhushan who is facing sentence for his tweet about
how the SC judgments were silent when the executive was destroying the demo-
cratic institutions. Compared to NDRF, the PM-CARES Fund is free from ac-
countability, presence of member from Opposition party and by its practice
‘transparency’ also. The SC ignored the points raised by two senior Advocates.
One - Dushyant Dave pointed out that PM-CARES was not subject to audit by
the Comptroller and Auditor General. It was not under “public scrutiny” and
contributions to it were “100% tax free”. Two - Kapil Sibal argued that corporate
contributors were lured to donate to PM-CARES because they could avail of cor-
porate social responsibility benefits, which was not possible in the case of dona-
tions to States’ funds.
The SC is right, there is no statutory prohibition on individuals to make
voluntary contributions to NDRF under Section 46(1)(b) of the Disaster Man-
agement Act of 2005. Question is not about presence or absence of prohibition; it
is about statutory norms of accountability. If PM-CARES within itself should
have provisions for audit, accountability, and transparency. Simply because of
name being different, the fund should remain unaccountable or what? Shyamlal
Yadav, an RTI activist journalist of The Indian Express has sent RTI queries to 55
PSUs and received, and until August 13, responses from 38, which showed that
they contributed a total of ` 2,105.38 crore over the past five months from budget
allocations in 2019-2020 and 2020-2021. Many organisations donated huge
amounts even before the budget is finalised. Some gave more than what was al-
located under Corporate Social Responsibility funds.
This fund had a corpus of ` 3,076.62 crore on March 31, 2020, of which

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