Many were surprised when, in 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a political rally, announced that a new special relief fund was being set up. Why create another fund when the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund has existed since 1948? Was it to cover up the government’s failures in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic? (The Wire extensively covered how, during the pandemic, the government wasted precious time lighting lamps in housing colonies and reciting mantras.) Or was a private fund being set up because the prime minister wanted yet another platform to build his personal brand?Whatever the motive, PM CARES, registered as a private trust on March 27, 2020, was embroiled in controversies from the very beginning. A shroud of mystery and secrecy has always surrounded it. With the media playing it safe for fear of retaliation, revelations about the fund’s workings emerged only in bits and pieces.That is why the details about PM CARES published in a study by the Washington-based International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) are all the more interesting. ICNL explained how relief funds were collected and utilised during the pandemic in six Asian countries – including a six-page chapter dedicated to India’s PM CARES. As the trust deed says, the Prime Minister of India is the chairman of the board of the PM CARES Trust and holds the authority to nominate three other trustees. The mandatory trustee members include office-holders such as the Minister of Defence and the Minister of Finance.So far, it says, the prime minister has nominated two former members of government and the chairman of the Tata Group to the PM CARES Trust. The trust deed (available on the fund’s website) makes it clear that the trustees are ‘ex officio members’ of the trust since they hold positions in government departments.This gives the impression that PM CARES is an integral part of the government, but its reluctance to share details with the public – though some information in the form of official audits is now provided – has made its role and status ambivalent. PM CARES also gives the impression that it is an official fund by liberally using national symbols: Satyameva Jayate, the tricolour and the Lion Capital. Moreover, the surfeit of facilities and privileges PM CARES enjoys gives it a distinctly sarkari aura.The report says:The lack of transparency [in PM CARES] is inconsistent with the level of scrutiny that NGOs have experienced in India, including instances where NGOs have been declared by courts and administrative bodies as “public authorities” subject to information disclosure under RTI, even where such NGOs receive private funding.From the very beginning, PM CARES has enjoyed exemptions from numerous funding restrictions and reporting obligations, the report notes. Contributions to it receive all the benefits of a public fund, such as exemption under the Income Tax Act, 1961. It is also exempt from the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, 2010, allowing it to receive unlimited foreign funding.Unlike other non-government organisations, Modi’s private trust is also a beneficiary of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) mandates. Other non-profit organisations that receive such funding are pressured to use the funds on specified activities. Otherwise, their unutilised funds are returned to companies or – as unlikely as it sounds – diverted into PM CARES or another government-managed fund. The government has directly appealed to corporations to contribute to PM CARES as part of their CSR obligations.Also read: Govt Can’t Call PM CARES Private After Writing It Into Law, Says CPI(M) MPThis brings us back to the ICNL study. It finds that when the government “incentivised and diverted” corporate philanthropic funding towards PM CARES, it led to layoffs and funding shortfalls in certain non-profit sectors and charitable organisations. This finding is based on testimonials from civil society members recorded in the study.That is not all. The ICNL study records a series of crackdowns on sources of information relating to PM CARES. Recently, the PMO instructed the Lok Sabha Secretariat not to allow parliamentary questions on this fund, the PM’s Relief Fund and the National Defence Fund. These funds, the PMO argued, are built exclusively on voluntary public contributions and do not draw money from the Consolidated Fund of India.Similar arguments were put forth to insulate PM CARES from the Right to Information Act, 2005. The fear of scrutiny appeared strong enough for the PMO to insist on excluding the fund from examination by the Comptroller and Auditor General as well. Instead, auditors were to be trust-appointed private firms.These stratagems did work. Within one year, PM CARES raised about Rs 10,990 crore and spent Rs 3,976 crore, leaving 64% of the funds unutilised as of March 2021. ICNL cites the audited report of PM CARES to state that as of March 31, that year it had an unspent balance of Rs 7,044 crore. It said 53% of this funding came from private sector donors and 42% from the public sector.Almost 15% of the total was donated by the Tata Trusts. Reliance also contributed Rs 500 crore. Among other contributors were the Aditya Birla Group (Rs 400 crore) and Adani Enterprises (Rs 100 crore). Contributions from ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank together amounted to Rs 175 crore. CSR funds from 38 public sector units contributed another Rs 175 crore to PM CARES. Educational institutions such as Navodaya Schools, the IITs, IIMs and central universities also contributed Rs 21.81 crore.A page from the “Government-Run National Relief Funds in Asia During the COVID-19 Pandemic” report by ICNL, published in January 2026.The government rigorously restricts overseas donations. Yet PM CARES received Rs 535.44 crore in foreign donations in its first three years, the study said, quoting media reports. Rosoboronexport, India’s largest source of arms imports, donated USD 2 million to PM CARES.By March 2021, PM CARES had reportedly raised about Rs 140 crore (approximately USD 17 million).Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra accused the government of accepting donations for PM CARES from Chinese firms such as TikTok even after the standoff with the country. This contrasted with earlier claims that foreign funds would only be collected from Non-Resident Indians, Persons of Indian Origin or international foundations. In June 2020, Capt Amarinder Singh, then chief minister of Punjab, also said donations from Chinese firms were accepted despite a recent border conflict with India.Also read: Fact Check: Have Chinese Companies Really Donated to the PM CARES Fund?The ICNL study raises questions about the use of PM CARES funds, including why a significant portion remains unspent. The government claimed in June 2020 that the PM CARES fund had allocated Rs 2,000 crore for the supply of 50,000 ventilators. However, an RTI query revealed in July 2020 that the number of ventilators being purchased using this money was 40,350, of which 17,100 ventilators had been “allocated/dispatched” to various states and Union Territories. Moreover, many ventilators paid for by the government were reportedly found defective.The PMO’s overriding prioritisation of PM CARES starved other organisations working in similar fields of funds. As a result, about 52% of nonprofit organisations were forced to reduce their annual budgets during 2020-21, on average cutting them by 32%. This substantially increased their FCRA compliance and re-registration costs.Another study cited by ICNL says PM CARES appropriated nearly one-third of India’s annual CSR grants. It effectively “deprived CSOs of financial resources, as a major chunk of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding got diverted into PM CARES”, the report says.Repeated appeals from and on behalf of PM CARES, highlighting the attractive terms it offered, also affected the fate of other nonprofit organisations. For instance, donations to PM CARES are 100% tax-deductible, which is not the case for many other nonprofits. This enabled PM CARES to attract more CSR funding from companies than comparable organisations.Such incentives, coupled with the fund’s apparent affiliation with the government, channelled even more contributions towards PM CARES. Financial resources were thus centralised and diverted away from organisations doing locally focused work to combat COVID-19.In an age of fractured mandates, personality cults and transactional alliances, P. Raman brings clarity to India’s shifting political equations. 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