Won’t move Money in PM Cares Fund to NDRF: Centre to SC

On Monday, the Central Govt told the Apex Court that money in a public charitable fund, like the PM Cares Fund, could not be transferred to a statutory fund like the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF), which gets budgetary allocations from the Centre.

The Centre Govt’s response came after Senior Lawyer Dushyant Dave, appearing for NGO ‘Centre for Public Interest Litigation’, told a bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan, Justice RS Reddy & Justice MR Shah that the Govt was rightly scrutinising contributions to the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, & contributions to the PM Cares Fund should similarly be scanned. He said while NDRF was subject to auditing by the CAG, the PM Cares Fund was scrutinised by independent auditors. “Why can’t it be made subject to public scrutiny?” he asked.

Mr Dave said when there existed a PM National Relief Fund and NDRF, the PM Cares Fund could not have been set up. His plea for transfer of money in the PM Cares Fund, estimated to be Rs 11,000 crore, to the NDRF was supported by senior Lawyer Kapil Sibal, who said while contributions to the new fund by corporate houses were counted as CSR activity, the same status wasn't available for funds set up by CMs. 

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta responded that CSR exemption for donations to NDRF was also available. “Contributions to NDRF is through budgetary allocations & also voluntary donations. But PM Cares is a pubic charitable trust. Can anyone make an argument that funds from a public charitable trust be taken & put in a statutory fund?” he said , adding that the amount would not be transferred to NDRF. 

The Court reserved its verdict on the plea for transfer of the corpus.

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