Parliament can't raise questions on PM CARES Fund, says PMO

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has told the Lok Sabha Secretariat that questions and other parliamentary interventions on the PM CARES Fund, the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) and the National Defence Fund (NDF) are not admissible under the House rules that govern the conduct of business, according to a report in The Indian Express, a blanket prohibition that raises more questions about funds whose opacity has long been a point of contention.

In a communication sent on January 30, the PMO said any questions, Zero Hour notices or Special Mentions relating to the three funds should be tested against Rule 41(2)(viii) and Rule 41(2)(xvii) of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha, under which such matters would not be allowed.

Rule 41(2)(viii) prohibits questions on issues “not primarily the concern of the Government of India,” while Rule 41(2)(xvii) bars questions on matters “under the control of bodies or persons not primarily responsible to the Government of India.” The PMO has argued that the three funds fall in this category because they are built entirely on voluntary public contributions and do not receive any money from the Consolidated Fund of India.

The Indian Express

 reported that the PMO’s position is that PM CARES, PMNRF and NDF are charitable funds whose corpus is made up of donations, and therefore they do not form part of the regular government finances that are answerable to Parliament in the same way as budgetary allocations. The PMO is learnt to have advised that, when in doubt, the Lok Sabha Secretariat may invoke these rules to decide on the admissibility of any reference to the three funds.

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PM CARES (Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations) Fund was set up in March 2020 to mobilise resources for emergencies such as the COVID‑19 pandemic. It is registered as a public charitable trust, with the Prime Minister as ex-officio chairperson and senior Union ministers as trustees. PMNRF, which predates Independence, is used to provide immediate relief to people affected by natural disasters, major accidents and riots, while the NDF supports the welfare of members of the armed forces, paramilitary personnel and their families.

In January 2023, the Centre told the Delhi High Court that PM CARES is a public charitable trust that is neither created under the Constitution nor under any law made by Parliament or a state legislature. In its affidavit, the Union government said the fund is “neither owned or controlled” by the government and that public officials are on the board of trustees only for administrative convenience, a stand that was cited to argue that the trust does not come within the definition of “State” under Article 12 of the Constitution and is therefore outside the ambit of the Right to Information Act.

The receipts and payments account of PM CARES Fund for 2022‑23, last published on its official website, put the closing balance of the fund at Rs 6,283.7 crore as on March 31, 2023. The fund’s accounts are audited by independent chartered accountants, unlike statutory funds such as the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF), which are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

The legal status of PM CARES and the question of oversight over its corpus have been the subject of multiple court proceedings. In August 2020, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition by the NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation seeking a direction to transfer contributions made to PM CARES to the NDRF to tackle the COVID‑19 crisis.

The court held that the two are “entirely different funds with different objects and purposes” and declined to order any transfer, noting that financial planning in disaster management lies within the domain of the executive. It also underlined that statutory guidelines require CAG audit of the NDRF, but said there was “no occasion” to extend such an arrangement to PM CARES Fund, which it described as a public charitable trust receiving voluntary contributions.

Questions raised on PM CARES

The shielding of funds and their vague governance and lack of public accountability have raised questions about their operations. 

Calling it “shocking,” Supreme Court lawyer Prasanth Bhushan, in a post on X, said, the PMO directive about not allowing Parliament to question the government over “how lakhs of Crores of our funds are being used (misused)” for PM CARES Fund is so that “the BJP/Modi can pocket those funds or give them to their cronies.”

Kerala Congress said the PM CARES Fund “is world’s first private kitty for a Prime Minister,” which in the name of relief aid, has been siphoned off. “If they bring in defense funds to list of unquestionable funds, then there is a bigger scandal happening in that too,” it added.

Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose said first it was journalists who couldn’t question the funds and now even the Parliament can’t. “In fact, I had asked several questions on PM Cares and none of them got listed. What is this secret fund being used for? Shameful,” she said.

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