Ever since the Central government launched the PM Cares fund, as the channel to receive donations and contributions from people to tackle the COVID-19 spread and to provide relief measures for the vulnerable groups even in the albeit of the Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund, it has been hitting controversies over its transparency and disclosure. 

Although the Prime Minister is the ex-officio chairman of the PM Cares fund, the funding channel and its operations have seemingly been concealing itself from the radar of auditing and scrutinizations as the exclusive fund to deal with the pandemic won't go under the lens of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, instead, it would be audited by the independent auditors. The opposition parties had quizzed the installation of the funding channel which won't be audited by the Central government body for handling the funds received from the general public. 

Amid facing transparency tests, the Prime Minister's Office has now revealed that the PM Cares Fund is not a public authority. The PMO has responded to the RTI (Right to Information) filed by a student of the Azim Premji University in Bangalore. The PMO has stated that the fund is not a public authority, under section 2(h) of the Right to Information Act 2005, due to which the information sought in the application can't be disclosed. The student has sought the copies of the trust deeds, circulars, notifications, and functioning of the PM Cares Fund.

It further raised speculations and dubiety on why the funding channel that receives the funds from the general public must skip from being under the lens of auditing and the RTI Act which are the major players that play a vital role in securing the transparency. Although the PM Cares Fund won't fall under the ambit of transparency, it has been banked up with crores of donations and the Prime Minister himself has appealed to the people to make donations to the fund without clarifying on whom the fund cares.

PM Cares Fund (Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund) was created on March 28 to tackle and counter the emergencies in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak and in its first week of launch, the fund has received Rs 6,500 crore and now the fund has received more than 10,000 crore. However, the contributors have been vested with no idea of how their funds have been managed.

PM Cares Fund accepts from small donations to foreign contributions and the formation of the funding channel has majorly been criticized on its requirement when India already has the availability of the funding channel - the Prime Minister National Relief Fund (PMNRF) since 1948. According to the reports, PM Cares Fund has received huge donations from corporate companies, central ministries, and public sector undertakings. 

By citing that the funding channel is not a public authority, the PMO said the relevant information concerning the fund can be acquired from the official website. The reports stated by quoting the saying of the senior government official that they don't have any clarity on how the money has been disbursed as the fund is directly administered by the Prime Minister's Office. 

The CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) office has stated that it has no right to audit the charitable organization since the fund collected through PM Cares is based on donations of individuals and organizations and the auditing body can scrutinize the accounts of PM Cares Fund only if the trustees permit to audit the channel. According to the government, the fund will be audited by the independent auditors who will be appointed by the trustees. 

PM Cares Fund has been set up as a charitable organization. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the chairperson of PM Cares Fund and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, and Home Minister Amit Shah have been inducted as trustees or members of the fund. Earlier, the Center has directed the employees to contribute one day's salary to the fund and in some cases, the donations received in PMNRF have been directed to the PM Cares Fund. Most of the ministers had contributed to the fund which has been kept as a top-secret leaving people to blink on the functioning of the fund and to whom it really cares.

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