Plea in Supreme Court for full disclosure of PM-CARES Fund

The plea was filed by social activist and advocate Divya Pal Singh

A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Union government to make full disclosure of accounts, activity and expenditure details of the PM-CARES Fund and make it open for audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

It contended that the creation of funds such as the PM-CARES Fund sans transparency and accountability and treating them as ‘private’ trusts, by exempting them from public scrutiny under the RTI Act and accountability was unconstitutional, unethical, immoral, undemocratic, and bad in both law and facts.

The plea filed by social activist and advocate Divya Pal Singh said that PMNRF and PM-CARES being public trusts, and both run and controlled by the government, entrusted with the task of providing immediate relief from natural calamities, major accidents, serious ailments, riot, etc, should adopt utmost transparency and accountability.

The petition filed through advocates Rajesh Inamdar, Shashwat Anand and Amit Pai and settled by senior advocate Devadatt Kamat challenged validity of the Allahabad High Court's judgement of August 31, 2020. The HC had dismissed the PIL relying upon the Union government's contention that the subject matter was covered by the apex court's decision of August 18, 2020, declining a plea by NGO CPIL for the CAG audit of PM-CARES Fund.

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The plea said the top court in its judgment in CPIL relied upon the central government’s affidavit and observed that the "PM-CARES Fund consists entirely of voluntary contributions from individuals/organisations and does not get any budgetary support and that no government money was credited in the PM-CARES Fund."

"However, it is a matter of great pity that this court was misled by the central government into making the said observations, by blatantly lying, concealing and suppressing the material facts that an ocean of public money is surreptitiously being poured into the PM-CARES Fund by the government ministries, agencies and instrumentalities," the petition alleged.

The plea further claimed unfathomable amounts of public money was pumped unabatedly every day into coffers with people having no clue about it. This was a brutal assault on democratic soul and spirit of the Constitution and gross violation of the fundamental rights of the citizens, it claimed.