New Delhi: The Prime Minister's office told the Delhi High Court that the PM Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situation Fund (PM-CARES Fund) is a charitable trust which has no connection with the Government of Indian nor the amount within the fund falls in the Consolidated Fund of India.
Responding to a plea seeking that the PM-CARES Fund be declared as a state fund under Article 12 of the Constitution, Pradeep Kumar Srivastava, an Under-Secretary at the PMO said that though the fund was set by the Prime Minister, and the cabinet ministers as being trustees of the Fund is not in any way entitled to disclose the details under the Right to Information Act.
Srivastava also informed his credentials with the Trust is as an honorary functionary and the entire activities of the Trust are transparent and audited by an auditor who is a Chartered Accountant from the panel prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.
The audit report is timely put on the website with details containing the utilization of the funds, he added.
The petitioner contended that the PM-CARES Fund was set up by constituted by the Prime Minister in March 2020 with an intention to extend assistance to the citizens in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. But a copy of the trust deed was released by the PM-CARES Fund on its website in December 2020, according to which it is not created by or under the Constitution or by any law made by Parliament, said the petitioner.