The government had set up the PM CARES fund with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation
| Photo Credit:
M K Srinidhi _12409
Total receipts including refund and interest under the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) fund has risen from ₹3,076.62 crore in 2019-20, when it was launched, to ₹8,452.95 crore in 2024-25, including fixed deposit worth ₹6,641.57 crore from past years. However, the government has published the one-page financial statement of audited account for 2024-25 without disclosing details, which has been criticised by RTI activists.
According to the audited statement of account of the PM CARES fund for FY25, signed by its Secretary Subhasish Panda and three other officials, as well as Tejas Parikh, partner of Mumbai-based charted accountancy firm KKC & Associates LLP, closing balance on March 31, 2025 was ₹8,452.07 crore, up 18 per cent from ₹7,173.03 crore a year earlier.
The fund spent ₹87.85 lakh on PM CARES for Children Scheme during 2024-25, sharply down from ₹15.38 crore in 2023-24. Domestic donations received by it in fiscal year 2023-24 stood at ₹681.81 crore, while foreign donations totalled ₹1.13 crore. But in 2024-25, domestic donations worth ₹479.05 crore and foreign donations of ₹92.83 lakh were received, both lower than a year before.
₹7,846.65 crore was parked in fixed deposits and ₹605.41 crore in savings bank accounts during FY25, the statement show.
“Why is the PM CARES Fund keeping such large sums of money idle? ₹324 crore was refunded by implementing agencies, but no info on what these payments were for and why these were refunded? Which agency refunded? Were refunds done to evade accountability for faulty equipment?” Anjali Bhardwaj, RTI activist, posted on social media handle X.
She also questioned why have accompanying notes to the audit report not been uploaded. But the one page financial statement has been uploaded for every year since 2019-20.
Bhardwaj said “a fund set up to help citizens during disasters, which has accumulated thousands of crores (including from foreign sources), is shrouded in secrecy. Still no information available on sources of funds. The PM CARES Fund continues to evade public scrutiny by refusing to submit itself to the RTI Act.”
A study of the audited statements on the PM CARES fund website shows that the voluntary domestic contribution peaked at ₹7,184 crore in 2020-21 and then fell to ₹1,896 crore in 2021-22, before declining further to ₹909 crore in 2022-23.
Foreign contribution has seen a sharper decline, registering a high of ₹495 crore in 2020-21, before falling to ₹40 crore and ₹2.57 crore in the next two years. The foreign contribution now stands at ₹92.8 lakh, the second lowest since ₹39.7 lakh in the first year of 2019-20.
The government had set up the PM CARES fund with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation, such as the one posed by the Covid pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected. It was registered as a public charitable trust. The Prime Minister is the ex-officio chairman of the fund that consists entirely of voluntary contributions and does not get any budgetary support.
In 2021-22, an amount of ₹1,703.14 crore was spent on pressure-swing adsorption (PSA) medical oxygen plants, besides spending ₹835.28 crore on ventilators supplied to government-run hospitals, out of a total expenditure of ₹3,716.29 crore.
Published on August 18, 2026
