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New Delhi:
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi at this time took a swipe on the Centre over the “transparency” in PM Cares Fund which was arrange following the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
“PM Cares-Chaliye, transparency ko vanakkam!” (PM Cares- Welcome transparency),” Mr Gandhi tweeted, sharing a screenshot of a news headline which seemed to suggest that the government is “not clear whether or not the fund is a non-public or authorities belief”.
On Wednesday, NDTV had also reported about the clause in the trust documents in the Fund that called it a private entity, and thus exempting it from RTI scrutiny.
The PM-CARES trust or the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund was set up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March to “take care of emergency or misery conditions just like the coronavirus pandemic”.
But while the PM-CARES trust has been registered with the revenue department of Delhi, with the Prime Minister as chairperson and senior ministers as trustees, the trust deed does not define it as a government trust.
Point 5.3 of the Trust Deed says: “The belief is neither supposed to be or is in truth owned, managed or considerably financed by any authorities or any instrumentality of the federal government. There isn’t any management of both the central authorities or any state governments, both direct or oblique, within the functioning of the belief in any method in anyway.”
The trust was registered on March 27. The very next day, on March 28, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs issued an office memorandum qualifying PM-CARES as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative to receive corporate donations.
But the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, while issuing the March 28 Office Memorandum, is learnt to have defined PM-CARES as a “fund arrange by the central authorities”, according to an RTI accessed by activist Anjali Bhardwaj.
However, the trust deed from the previous day said the Fund was government-run and so could not be eligible for corporate donations.
The contradiction continued until almost two months later, and on May 26, the Corporate Affairs Ministry added PM-CARES Fund to the Companies Act retrospectively from March 28.
For two months, PM-CARES was a private entity receiving corporate donations.
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram had in a series of tweets raised question on the transparency of the Fund.
“If the Fund is a non-public established fund, why are donations to the fund counted towards CSR?” he had tweeted on August 20.
NDTV had filed an RTI software with the Prime Minister’s Office asking for a similar belief deed, however the request was rejected on the bottom that the fund isn’t a public entity.
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