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PM CARES Fund & PM NRF: Why Are Auditor's Notes Missing in FY22-23 Financial Statements?
Moneylife Digital Team 23 January 2025
Economy & Nation
A lot of ink has been spilled on the controversial issue of the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund, including the debate on whether it is a public authority. However, the latest audit statements, uploaded after a delay of over two years by the PM CARES Fund for FY22-23 as well as the PM National Relief Fund (PM NRF), are not complete. Both do not provide notes on the financial statements. Audit statements for FY23-24 onwards are still not uploaded by the PM CARES Fund. 
 
While PM CARES uploaded the financial statements after a long delay, Right to Information (RTI) activist commodore (Cmde) Lokesh Batra, who has been pursuing this issue of PM CARES, found that it does not show notes to the financial statements as mentioned. For PM CARES, the notes are about 11 pages, while for PM NRF the number of pages is 12 as per the financial statements signed by the auditors and concerned officials of these funds.
 
In a post on X, Cmde Batra says, "Why are the auditor's notes not disclosed by the: PM CARES Fund and PMNRF? Auditor's notes to the 'financial statements' of the PM CARES fund as well as the PM NRF - can be seen above the signatures on their respective 'Audited Statement 2022-2023'."
 
 
According to Cmde Batra, the audited statements of the PM CARES Fund were submitted by the auditors on 29 March 2024, while for PM NRF, the date was 29 September 2023. Yet, he says, both these audited statements were uploaded on their websites only in December 2024.
 
 
 
Following the COVID-19 outbreak, on 27 March 2020, the PM CARES Fund was set up to curb the virus outbreak in India and to alleviate the suffering of the people due to the pandemic. In addition to guaranteeing relief from COVID-19, the fund was also expected to cover any such disastrous episode faced by India in the future. 
 
However, this public welfare fund has been largely privatised in its undertakings with respect to its establishment and function. The controversy surrounding the PM CARES Fund stems from how it was presented to the public. It was unmistakably sold as a public fund much like the PMNRF, while questions of its true nature remained under wraps. 
 
The PM NRF was set up in January 1948 to accept public contributions for the assistance of Partition refugees. Subsequently, it was used to provide immediate relief to the families of those killed in natural calamities, the victims of major accidents and riots and support medical expenses for acid attack victims, among other things. This Fund, as of December 2019, had an unspent balance of Rs3,800 crore in its corpus, which could have been utilised for providing the necessary funds for medical infrastructure and COVID-19 relief operations. But then the Union government, through a press note on 28 March 2020, set up the PM CARES Fund as a national charitable trust.
 
A May 2020 report from IndiaSpend shows, within two months after being set up, at least Rs9,677.9 crore was collected in the PM CARES fund for COVID-19 relief.
 
It says, "At least an additional Rs2,098.2 crore has been pledged to the fund and Rs7,855 crore has also been earmarked from other government sources. On 13 May 2020, the prime minister's office (PMO) had announced that Rs3,100 crore from PM CARES had been allocated for COVID-19 works, the first and only announcement on expenditure from the fund. This is 32% of Rs9,677.9 crore collected as of 20 May 2020."
 
"Information about funds donated to PM CARES or money spent from the fund is not widely available in public domain, and it is unclear if the fund will make its donations public--since it does not take money from the Consolidated Fund of India, it does not need to be audited by the comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG)," the report says.
 
However, since its inception, the PM CARES Fund has only made its receipt and payment accounts reports public. Its financial statements only provide information about voluntary contributions, foreign contributions, interest earned, payments towards oxygen plants and other COVID-19-related expenses and the remaining balance. 
 
The financial statements never share details about donors or donated amounts and money paid along with the dates. Also, PM CARES Fund, the public trust, has shied away from sharing auditor's notes to the financial statements.
 
As per the latest financial statement, the PM CARES Fund received nearly Rs909 crore as voluntary contributions and about Rs2.57 crore as foreign contributions in FY22-23. The PM CARES Fund has a balance of Rs6,284 crore in its savings bank account as of March 2023.
 
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