The Rooster News · Investigation
By Rahul, founder and editor · 19 August 2026
On the face of the six signed accounts, PM CARES took in ₹14,766.98 cr in donations and ₹1,178.56 cr in interest. Cash paid out was ₹8,148.33 cr. Agencies later sent back ₹654.86 cr. On 31 March 2025 the closing balance was ₹8,452.07 cr— ₹7,846.65 cr in fixed deposits.
FY 2024–25 is not a ₹3.31-crore spending year. The PDF shows ₹87.85 lakh in payments — 0.01% of the closing pile. The extra ₹2.43 crore is money returned to donors, not relief. Year by year, as printed. Five demands of the chair.
Narendra Modi, ex-officio chairman of PM CARES. The fund uses his office, the State Emblem, and a gov.in domain. The appeal of 28 March 2020 was made in this name. Photo: India Today, August 2026.
Donations, as printed
₹14,767 cr
₹1,47,66,98,13,169 · interest is another ₹1,178.56 cr
Sum of the donation lines on the six receipts faces (net of donor refunds in FY24–FY25). Do not call this “₹15,946 crore in donations” — that figure folds in interest. Agency refunds are a third column, not a donation.
Paid out
₹8,148 cr
net of agency refunds ₹7,490.24 cr
Total Payments on the six accounts. Donor refunds are a payment in FY22–FY23 and are netted against donations in FY24–FY25. They are not relief spending.
Still in the bank
₹8,452 cr
57.2% of donations · ₹7,846.65 cr in FDs
31 March 2025. ₹7,846.65 crore in fixed deposits; ₹605.41 crore in savings. Interest that year, ₹475.28 crore, almost matched fresh domestic donations. Programme spend was ₹87.85 lakh — 0.01% of this pile.
The Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund is a public charitable trust set up on 27 March 2020. The Prime Minister is the ex-officio chair. It is not a line in the Union Budget, and it is not paid for by a parliamentary appropriation from the Consolidated Fund of India.
So when these accounts say money was “spent”, they mean the trust disbursed donated money — from individuals, companies and public-sector undertakings — plus the interest that money later earned in the bank. The receipts-and-payments accounts do not name donors, so we cannot split “PSU money” from “private money”. We can only split what the auditor split: domestic donations, foreign donations, and interest.
Foreign contributions are real, but small after the first full year: ₹494.92 crore in FY21, then a trickle. Interest is not small. By FY25, interest on the fixed deposits alone (₹469.38 crore) almost matched the entire year's domestic donations.
01 — Year by year
Bars are donations-plus-interest and the PDF payments total, in crore. The line is the closing balance. After FY22 the fund takes in more than it spends, every year. Agency refunds are a third column — not “came in”, not “spent”.
₹ crore · bars = donations + interest / payments · line = closing
| Year | Donations | Interest | Agency refunds | Payments | Closing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019–20stub | ₹3,076.27 cr | ₹0.35 cr | — | ₹0.02 lakh | ₹3,076.63 cr |
| 2020–21 | ₹7,678.69 cr | ₹234.6 cr | ₹0.25 cr | ₹3,976.17 cr | ₹7,014 cr |
| 2021–22 | ₹1,936.88 cr | ₹160.26 cr | ₹20.81 cr | ₹3,716.29 cr | ₹5,415.66 cr |
| 2022–23 | ₹912.21 cr | ₹170.38 cr | ₹224.83 cr | ₹439.38 cr | ₹6,283.68 cr |
| 2023–24 | ₹682.95 cr | ₹137.69 cr | ₹84.31 cr | ₹15.6 cr | ₹7,173.03 cr |
| 2024–25 | ₹479.98 cr | ₹475.28 cr | ₹324.66 cr | ₹0.88 cr | ₹8,452.07 cr |
| Six-year total | ₹14,766.98 cr | ₹1,178.56 cr | ₹654.86 cr | ₹8,148.33 cr | ₹8,452.07 cr |
1 Apr 2020 – 31 Mar 2021
The COVID year. Largest inflow and the first large disbursals: ventilators, migrant welfare, vaccines, oxygen plants.
Audited by SARC & Associates · signed 11 January 2022
02 — Source of funds
The accounts have three incoming pipes: voluntary contributions from inside India (plus a ₹2.25 lakh initial corpus), foreign contributions, and bank interest. They do not say who the donors were.
Domestic donations + corpus
₹14,226.91 cr
89.2% of new money
Foreign donations
₹540.07 cr
3.4% of new money
Interest (incl. TDS refund)
₹1,178.56 cr
7.4% of new money
₹ crore · stacked by source
| Year | Domestic | Foreign | Interest | Donations + interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019–20 | ₹3,075.88 cr | ₹0.40 cr | ₹0.35 cr | ₹3,076.63 cr |
| 2020–21 | ₹7,183.78 cr | ₹494.92 cr | ₹234.6 cr | ₹7,913.3 cr |
| 2021–22 | ₹1,896.76 cr | ₹40.12 cr | ₹160.26 cr | ₹2,097.14 cr |
| 2022–23 | ₹909.64 cr | ₹2.57 cr | ₹170.38 cr | ₹1,082.59 cr |
| 2023–24 | ₹681.81 cr | ₹1.14 cr | ₹137.69 cr | ₹820.64 cr |
| 2024–25 | ₹479.05 cr | ₹0.93 cr | ₹475.28 cr | ₹955.25 cr |
FY21 is the foreign-money year: ₹494.92 crore, 6.3% of that year's intake. After that, foreign inflows collapse to a few crore a year. Interest does the opposite — it grows as the unspent corpus grows, and explodes in FY25 once most of the money is in fixed deposits. FY24 and FY25 print donations net of money returned to donors (₹1.62 crore and ₹2.43 crore). Those two years now follow the PDF face, not a grossed-up cash figure.
03 — What the money was spent on
Gross disbursals to programmes were ₹8,144.61 cr. Implementing agencies later sent back ₹654.86 cr of unspent money (₹245.64 cr tagged to a named line; ₹409.22 cr lumped as “refund from implementing agencies” in FY24–FY25). Net programme spend: ₹7,489.75 cr.
Oxygen & critical care
₹5,155 cr
net ₹4,921.95 cr
Vaccines & labs
₹1,413 cr
net ₹1,412.9 cr
Hospitals
₹214 cr
net ₹201.86 cr
Welfare
₹1,000 cr
net ₹1,000 cr
Children
₹362 cr
net ₹362.25 cr
Gross bars · pale end-cap is money later refunded
| Programme | Group | Gross paid | Refunded | Net |
|---|---|---|---|---|
50,000 Made-in-India ventilators Supplied to government hospitals run by the Centre, states and Union territories. Paid across FY21 and FY22. Implementing agencies later returned ₹202.89 crore of unspent money. | Oxygen & critical care | ₹2,146.62 cr | ₹202.89 cr | ₹1,943.74 cr |
Additional dedicated PSA oxygen plants The single largest payment line in any year: ₹1,703.15 crore in FY22, after the second-wave oxygen crisis. Small unspent refunds followed. | Oxygen & critical care | ₹1,703.15 cr | ₹4.67 cr | ₹1,698.48 cr |
6.6 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses Procured in FY21. A ₹0.34 crore unspent balance was later refunded. | Vaccines & labs | ₹1,392.83 cr | ₹0.34 cr | ₹1,392.49 cr |
Migrant welfare — allotted to states & UTs ₹1,000 crore sent to states and Union territories in FY21 for the welfare of migrant workers during the first lockdown. | Welfare | ₹1,000 cr | — | ₹1,000 cr |
99,986 oxygen concentrators ₹500 crore in FY22 and a further ₹91.87 crore in FY23. | Oxygen & critical care | ₹591.87 cr | — | ₹591.87 cr |
PM CARES for Children Scheme for children who lost both parents or a surviving parent / legal guardian to COVID-19. A ₹10 lakh fixed deposit is held until age 18, with education and health cover. Almost all of the money went out in FY23; later years are small top-ups. | Children | ₹362.25 cr | — | ₹362.25 cr |
1.5 lakh SpO2 oxygen-control systems + 10 lakh NRMs Pulse-oximetry-based oxygen control systems with non-rebreather masks, plus 10 lakh extra masks. | Oxygen & critical care | ₹322.5 cr | ₹1.76 cr | ₹320.74 cr |
162 PSA medical oxygen plants First oxygen-plant package, installed inside public health facilities in FY21. | Oxygen & critical care | ₹201.58 cr | ₹23.86 cr | ₹177.73 cr |
Liquid oxygen equipment (IOCL / MoPNG) Procured by Indian Oil through the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas. | Oxygen & critical care | ₹189.4 cr | — | ₹189.4 cr |
Two 500-bed makeshift hospitals — Jammu & Srinagar One 500-bed COVID hospital in each city, FY22. | Hospitals | ₹82.94 cr | — | ₹82.94 cr |
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel COVID hospital, Delhi Cantt. Reactivation of the 500-ICU-bed DRDO hospital at Delhi Cantonment. | Hospitals | ₹67.95 cr | — | ₹67.95 cr |
Makeshift hospitals in Muzaffarpur & Patna + 16 RT-PCR labs Two 500-bed hospitals and 16 testing labs across 9 states/UTs. A large share of the original ₹50 crore later came back unspent. | Hospitals | ₹50 cr | ₹12.13 cr | ₹37.87 cr |
Two DBT labs upgraded as Central Drug Laboratories Autonomous institute laboratories under the Department of Biotechnology, upgraded to test and release COVID-19 vaccine batches. | Vaccines & labs | ₹20.42 cr | — | ₹20.42 cr |
Atal Bihari Vajpayee COVID hospital, Lucknow (DRDO) Makeshift 500-bed hospital built by DRDO. | Hospitals | ₹13.1 cr | — | ₹13.1 cr |
| Unallocated agency refunds | Returned, line not named | — | ₹409.22 cr | −₹409.22 cr |
| All programmes | ₹8,144.61 cr | ₹654.86 cr | ₹7,489.75 cr |
04 — What remains
In FY24 the trustees moved ₹6,641.57 cr into fixed deposits. A year later that pile is ₹7,846.65 cr, and it earned ₹475.28 cr — more than the year's foreign donations, and nearly as much as all domestic donations (₹479.98 cr).
31 March 2025
₹8,452.07 cr
FY25 run-rate
After the pandemic years the trust is collecting interest and refunds, not deploying a COVID-scale programme. The only named spend left is PM CARES for Children.
| Year-end | Savings | Fixed deposits | Total held |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Mar 2020 | ₹3,076.63 cr | — | ₹3,076.63 cr |
| 31 Mar 2021 | ₹7,014 cr | — | ₹7,014 cr |
| 31 Mar 2022 | ₹5,415.66 cr | — | ₹5,415.66 cr |
| 31 Mar 2023 | ₹6,283.68 cr | — | ₹6,283.68 cr |
| 31 Mar 2024 | ₹531.47 cr | ₹6,641.57 cr | ₹7,173.03 cr |
| 31 Mar 2025 | ₹605.41 cr | ₹7,846.65 cr | ₹8,452.07 cr |
05 — The year the money sat
FY 2024–25 is the year the trust spent ₹87.85 lakh — ₹87,85,291 — and earned ₹475.28 cr sitting in the bank. The name on the deed is Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations. These were the emergencies.
PM CARES, FY25 payments
₹87.85 lakh
Children scheme + ₹451 bank charges. No flood line. No landslide line. No cyclone line.
Centre, same year — SDRF + NDRF
₹23,131 cr
₹18,322.80 crore SDRF to 27 states and ₹4,808.30 crore NDRF to 18 states, per the Home Ministry’s FY25 tally. Public money, public rules.
Still in PM CARES on 31 Mar 2025
₹8,452 cr
More than half of everything ever donated, parked, while the Union sent NDRF files to the same hills and riverbanks.
01 · 30 July 2024
Mundakkai, Chooralmala and nearby villages were buried after two days of extreme rain. Hundreds died. The Prime Minister flew over the hills on 10 August and announced PMNRF ex-gratia — ₹2 lakh to the next of kin, ₹50,000 to the injured. PM CARES, of which he is ex-officio chair, records no landslide line on the FY25 payments face. The year’s entire programme spend is ₹87.85 lakh, on the Children scheme.
02 · Monsoon 2024
The Brahmaputra did what it does every year, only worse in pockets. An Inter-Ministerial Central Team was sent. Relief that moved, moved through SDRF and NDRF — the Consolidated Fund. Not the ₹8,452 crore sitting in scheduled-bank accounts in the Prime Minister’s name.
03 · August 2024
Flash floods and landslides cut the state. In February 2025 the Home Ministry’s high-level committee cleared ₹288.93 crore of additional NDRF for Tripura as part of a ₹1,554.99 crore five-state package. PM CARES is not in that table.
04 · Monsoon 2024
The same February 2025 package sent ₹608.08 crore of NDRF to Andhra Pradesh and ₹231.75 crore to Telangana. Two states, two lines, public money, a public auditor. The private-trust pile next door did not stir.
05 · Monsoon 2024
An IMCT was constituted. Damage was assessed under NDRF/SDRF rules. Nothing equivalent appears in the PM CARES receipts-and-payments account for the year.
06 · Monsoon 2024
Twenty-five dead on the Home Ministry’s own IMCT table as of November 2024. The state has lived with flood relief as a seasonal file. FY25 PM CARES still has one programme line: children who lost parents to COVID, years earlier.
07 · Monsoon 2024
Hillsides gave way again. Roads, houses, apple country. The Centre’s disaster window is SDRF/NDRF. The fund that was sold as “citizen assistance and relief in emergency situations” earned ₹475 crore on fixed deposits that year.
08 · May & October 2024
Remal made landfall in May; Dana in October. Evacuations, camps, power down. Odisha’s additional NDRF slice in the February 2025 package was ₹255.24 crore. Cyclone is the textbook emergency the trust’s name describes. The FY25 payments total is still ₹87.85 lakh.
Walk into a government school in the same districts that flooded. Roofs that leak. Toilets that don’t. Libraries that are a locked cupboard. Teachers on paper. The Annual Status of Education Report has said this, in public, for twenty years. UDISE+ still counts schools without a working toilet, without electricity, without a first-aid box. None of that is a secret.
PM CARES for Children is a ₹10 lakh fixed deposit for a child who lost both parents, or the surviving parent, to COVID — held until eighteen, with education and health cover. It is not a school building. It is not a toilet. It is not a teacher. In FY25 that scheme is the only programme on the payments face.
The trust deed is the chair’s to amend. The board is the Prime Minister and three cabinet ministers. If the emergency that filled the box is over, the question is not “can the deed fund a classroom.” The question is why a corpus that earned ₹475.28 cr doing nothing cannot be put to government schools — roofs, toilets, kitchens, books — in the states that just buried their dead. ₹87.85 lakh is not an answer. It is a refusal dressed as a scheme.
Put it to the chair: spend on the floods that came. Spend on the schools that are still wet. Or say, in the Lok Sabha, why not.
06 — The question from the feed
That is the sentence the books cannot answer, and the sentence the Instagram post of 16 August 2026 put back on the table. The accounts tell you the rupees. They do not tell you the donors. They do not travel through the RTI Act. This chapter puts the post next to the public record.
The PM CARES Fund is back under scrutiny over a central question: how transparent should a public-facing emergency fund be?
Debates around RTI applicability, disclosure of donations and institutional accountability continue to raise important governance concerns.
The issue sits at the intersection of transparency, public trust, executive accountability and the right to information.
Posted by Sagar Bhagat. The slides themselves are not reproduced here — Instagram blocks the files. The caption is.
Open the postRTI, donors, accountability. Answered from the accounts you have already read, and from the court and commission record the accounts never mention.
01
The PMO’s consistent answer since 2020 is no: the trust is not a “public authority” under the RTI Act, 2005. The Supreme Court in August 2020 refused to force a CAG audit. The Delhi High Court on 13 January 2026 called it a “juristic or government entity” and still left a privacy claim standing. A 2022 CIC order that the Income Tax department disclose the fund’s tax-exemption file was quashed the same year; the appeal is pending. So: you cannot today walk into a PIO’s office and demand the donor list.
02
Only as three pipes — domestic, foreign, interest. The six receipts-and-payments accounts never name a donor, a company, or a PSU. Official FAQ text says budgetary transfers from PSUs are not accepted, but CSR from companies and PSUs is, and it is not broken out. Foreign money is FCRA-exempt. The first rupees in the book are a ₹2.25 lakh corpus; the PMO has said that was the Prime Minister’s own seed. Everything after that is a total.
03
A private chartered accountant (SARC & Associates through FY23; KKC & Associates LLP for FY24–25), not the CAG. The statements are uploaded on pmcares.gov.in. Parliament is told questions do not lie, because the money is not from the Consolidated Fund. The trustees are the Prime Minister and the Defence, Home and Finance ministers, sitting ex officio; the PMO says that is “administrative convenience,” not government control. The trust uses the State Emblem and a gov.in domain. There was no Cabinet agenda to create it.
What these six accounts do show
What they still do not show
The Instagram post landed two days after FY24 and FY25 were signed, and two weeks after newspapers flagged a two-year hole on the website. The hole was real. The new statements close it — as receipts and payments, not as an RTI file.
27 Mar 2020
Trust registered
Registered as a public charitable trust under the Registration Act, 1908, at New Delhi. Prime Minister is ex-officio chair; Defence, Home and Finance ministers are ex-officio trustees. Announced the next day.
Jun 2020
No Cabinet agenda
Cabinet Secretariat reply to an RTI (Anjali Bhardwaj): there was no agenda item in any Cabinet meeting specifically related to creating the fund.
Aug 2020
Supreme Court, CPIL
Court refuses to order a transfer of the corpus to the National Disaster Response Fund, or a CAG audit. It treats the fund as a public charitable trust of voluntary contributions, auditable by a private accountant.
2020–21
PMO: not a public authority
Repeated RTI replies from the PMO: the trust is not a “public authority” under the RTI Act, 2005, so the office will not disclose the trust deed, donor lists, or internal papers under that Act.
27 Apr 2022
CIC vs Income Tax
Central Information Commission directs the Income Tax department to give Girish Mittal details of tax exemptions granted to the fund. A single judge of the Delhi High Court quashes that order in July 2022. The appeal is still live.
Jan 2023
PMO affidavit
In the Delhi High Court the PMO says the trust is “neither intended to be nor is in fact owned, controlled, or substantially financed by any government,” and is not “the State” under Article 12.
13 Jan 2026
Delhi High Court
A bench observes that although the fund is a “juristic or government entity”, it cannot be denied a claim to privacy under the RTI Act. The tax-exemption appeal remains pending.
Budget 2026
Parliament questions blocked
PMO writes to the Lok Sabha Secretariat that questions on the fund cannot be taken up: it is not paid from the Consolidated Fund, and Rule 41 keeps out matters “not primarily the concern” of the Union government. Former LS Secretary-General P.D.T. Achary says admission of questions is the Speaker’s, not the PMO’s.
31 Jul 2026
The audit gap is noticed
Public reporting (The Hindu and others) notes that no audited statement later than FY 2022–23 is on the website. That gap is real: FY23 was signed 29 March 2024; FY24 and FY25 are signed only on 6–7 August 2026.
16 Aug 2026
The Instagram question
Sagar Bhagat (@upscwith_sagar) posts the carousel this chapter answers: how transparent should a public-facing emergency fund be?
07 — The appeal, then the lock
On 28 March 2020 the Prime Minister, in his own name, asked Indians for money. Four days later the trust held ₹3,076.63 cr. Six years later the same chair has kept the donor list, the CAG and the Lok Sabha off the file. The two newspapers of 18 August 2026 only restated what these accounts already say. The argument is not the rupees. The argument is the silence around them.
@narendramodi · 28 March 2020tweet 1
People from all walks of life expressed their desire to donate to India’s war against COVID-19. Respecting that spirit, the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund has been constituted. This will go a long way in creating a healthier India.
Open the tweet
@narendramodi · 28 March 2020tweet 2
It is my appeal to my fellow Indians, Kindly contribute to the PM-CARES Fund. This Fund will also cater to similar distressing situations, if they occur in the times ahead.
Open the tweet
@narendramodi · 28 March 2020tweet 3
The PM-CARES Fund accepts micro-donations too. It will strengthen disaster management capacities and encourage research on protecting citizens. Let us leave no stone unturned to make India healthier and more prosperous for our future generations.
Open the tweet
Read those sentences again. Citizen assistance. Emergency. Disaster management. Research. A healthier India. Micro-donations. Future distressing situations. He did not say “private trust.” He did not say “outside RTI.” He did not say “the Comptroller and Auditor General will not see this.” He did not say “Parliament may not ask.” Those doors were shut later, by the same office that made the appeal.
A fund that uses the Prime Minister’s name, the State Emblem, a gov.in domain, three Union ministers as trustees, 80G, CSR and FCRA exemption, and the whole machinery of missions and ministries to raise money, is then described as a private charitable trust when anyone asks to see the list.
RTI
Not a public authority
The PMO’s line since June 2020: the trust is not a “public authority” under the Right to Information Act, 2005. Citizen applications for the trust deed, donor lists and internal papers are refused. A 2022 CIC order telling the Income Tax department to open the tax-exemption file was quashed. The Delhi High Court in January 2026 still left a privacy claim standing.
CAG
Not the Comptroller and Auditor General
The Supreme Court in August 2020 refused to order a CAG audit. The books are signed by a private chartered-accountant firm — SARC, then KKC. That is not the same as a public audit. There is no published management letter, no UDIN on the face of the statements the critics examined, and no notes to accounts on the website.
Parliament
Questions do not lie
Ahead of the 2026 Budget session the PMO wrote to the Lok Sabha Secretariat that questions on the fund cannot be taken up: the money is not from the Consolidated Fund, and Rule 41 keeps out matters “not primarily the concern” of the Union government. Former Secretary-General P.D.T. Achary said admission of questions is the Speaker’s, not the PMO’s. The chair of the trust is the Prime Minister. The House is told it cannot ask him.
The Telegraph and Deccan Herald published the new statements the same day. Their headlines are the books, compressed. Their quotes are the questions the chair has not answered.
The Telegraph · 18 August 2026
Web Desk, with PTI
Opposition and transparency activists read the new statements as a pile of idle money raised in an emergency that is over.
₹8,452 crore sitting idle while people suffer. PM CARES? Hardly.
Pawan Khera, Congress
Modi govt owes India 3 answers: Who donated? Why is it not being spent? Why is it still hidden from public audit?
Kushagra Saxena, Congress
324 crore was refunded by implementing agencies — but no info on what these payments were for and why these were refunded? Which agency refunded?
Anjali Bhardwaj, RTI activist
Deccan Herald · 18 August 2026
Shemin Joy
Two years of donations, two years of almost no programme. The headline numbers match these six accounts once donor refunds are netted the way the auditor nets them.
Finally the audit statement of PMCARES Fund for 2024-25 has been made public! Utilised only 0.01% of available ₹8,452 crore. 324 crore was refunded by implementing agencies — but no info on what these payments were for. The PMCARES Fund continues to evade public scrutiny by refusing to submit itself to the RTI Act.
Anjali Bhardwaj (@AnjaliB_), the post Deccan Herald embedded
Checked against these six accounts · FY24 + FY25
Deccan Herald’s ₹1,162.92 crore is domestic plus foreign donations for the two years, net of money sent back to donors — the same netting the auditor uses. ₹16.47 crore is the two years of stated payments. Both numbers hold.
In two years the pile earned ₹612.97 cr sitting in the bank, and spent ₹16.48 cr — 2.7% of the interest, and 1.4% of the new donations. The rest is still there. ₹7,846.65 cr of it is in fixed deposits.
01
The receipts-and-payments accounts never name a person, a company, a PSU, or a foreign donor. CSR was made eligible the day the fund was announced. Budgetary transfers from PSUs are officially not accepted — CSR from those same PSUs is. You cannot check either claim from these books.
02
FY25 programme spend is ₹87.85 lakh — 0.01% of the closing pile. In FY24 and FY25 together the trust took in ₹1,162.92 crore of donations (net of donor refunds) and spent ₹16.48 crore. Interest on the fixed deposits in those two years, ₹612.97 crore, is thirty-seven times the spend. The standing defence is “reserved for the next crisis.” The appeal that filled the box was for this one.
03
Not RTI. Not CAG. Not Parliament. The FY24 year ended 31 March 2024; the signature is 7 August 2026 — twenty-eight months later. FY25 is sixteen months late. Private charitable trusts are still supposed to be audited. A two-year hole on the website is not a private convenience. It is a public silence.
04
FY25 shows ₹324.66 crore of refunds from implementing agencies, with no agency, no programme, no reason. Earlier years at least named the lines — ventilators, PSA plants, Bihar hospitals. Anjali Bhardwaj asked whether refunds were used to bury faulty equipment. The accounts cannot answer her. They were not built to.
05
He is the ex-officio chair. He made the appeal in his own name. On 18 August 2026 the two papers that published these numbers quote the Opposition and an RTI activist. They do not quote him. They do not quote the Finance Minister. The PMO’s contribution is the standing line that questions do not lie, and that the trust is not a public authority. That is a refusal, not an explanation.
08 — Accountability
The Rooster News puts these to the Prime Minister, the three ex-officio trustees, and the PMO. The books are public. The answers are not. Until they are, PM CARES remains a public fund with private rules.
01
Notify PM CARES as a public authority under the Right to Information Act, 2005. A fund that uses the Prime Minister’s name, the emblem and a gov.in domain cannot hide behind “private trust.”
02
Order a Comptroller and Auditor General audit of the full corpus — donations, foreign inflows, fixed deposits, interest, agency refunds and every implementing-agency unspent balance — not a private chartered accountant’s receipts-and-payments face.
03
Release the institutional donor list: every PSU, company, ministry drive and foreign contributor, with amounts. Individual small donors may be anonymised. CSR and public-sector money cannot be a secret.
04
Upload the notes to accounts, utilisation certificates, agency-wise refunds, vendor contracts and the criteria for the Children scheme. FY25’s ₹324.66 crore came back with no names. That is not an audit. It is a blank.
05
Withdraw the PMO’s instruction that questions on the fund do not lie. The chair sits in the House. The three other trustees are ministers. Let the Lok Sabha ask why ₹8,452 crore sat in fixed deposits through Wayanad, the 2024 floods and two cyclones, and why government schools still wait.
Addressed to:
Q01
Why did a fund raised by a Prime Minister’s public appeal — with the State Emblem, a gov.in domain, and three cabinet ministers as trustees — lock itself out of the RTI Act?
Q02
Who donated? How much came from PSUs, from private companies counting CSR, and from foreign sources? The receipts-and-payments accounts never name a donor.
Q03
Why were the FY24 and FY25 accounts signed only on 7 August 2026 — twenty-eight months after FY24 ended — against the trust deed’s own rule of a yearly audit?
Q04
Which implementing agencies returned ₹324.66 crore in FY25, for what, and were any refunds used to bury faulty equipment?
Q05
Why was ₹87.85 lakh — 0.01% of ₹8,452 crore — spent in FY25, in a year of Wayanad landslides, Assam and Tripura floods, Himachal cloudbursts and cyclones Remal and Dana, while the pile earned ₹475 crore sitting in fixed deposits?
Q06
The Centre released ₹18,323 crore of SDRF and ₹4,808 crore of NDRF the same year. Why did the faster, kinder twin — PM CARES — write no flood, landslide or cyclone cheque?
Q07
Will the chair put any of the idle corpus into government schools — roofs, toilets, kitchens, books — or will PM CARES for Children remain the only education line, a ₹10 lakh FD for COVID orphans, while classrooms leak?
Q08
Will the chair — the Prime Minister — answer in his own voice, or will the PMO go on telling the Lok Sabha that questions do not lie?
09 — From the record, and from X
Anjali Bhardwaj’s 18 August post is the thread Deccan Herald embedded. The rest are party statements. None of them are the accounts. They are here because the chair of the trust has not answered them. Each card links to the original.
Featured · the post the papers used
Anjali Bhardwaj
@AnjaliB_ · RTI activist · Satark Nagrik Sangathan · 18 Aug 2026
Finally the audit statement of PMCARES Fund for 2024-25 has been made public! Key highlights- -Utilised only 0.01% of available ₹ 8,452 crore! Why is the PMCARES 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? -Why have accompanying notes to the audit report not been uploaded? 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 PMCARES Fund continues to evade public scrutiny by refusing to submit itself to the RTI Act.
Anjali Bhardwaj
@AnjaliB_ · RTI activist · Satark Nagrik Sangathan
18 Aug 2026
So PMCARES Fund got its accounts for FY 2023-24 and 2024-25 audited only on August 7, 2026! This violates even the PMCARES Fund own trust deed which states that accounts will be audited once in every financial year. The resistance to transparency and scrutiny in PMCARES raises serious questions.
Open on XPawan Khera
@Pawankhera · Congress · Rajya Sabha, CWC
18 Aug 2026
Only 0.01% of the ₹8,452 crore available has been utilised — even as natural calamities devastate communities across the country and thousands need relief and rehabilitation. ₹8,452 crore sitting idle while people suffer. PM CARES? Hardly.
Open on XSyed Naseer Hussain
@NasirHussainINC · Congress · Rajya Sabha, CWC
19 Aug 2026
The Modi Government has evaded accountability on the PM CARES Fund by refusing to submit it to the RTI Act. After a delay of two years, its FY 2024-25 audit statement has finally been made public. A fund created to help citizens during emergencies and disasters cannot remain shrouded in secrecy. Why is the Modi Government keeping thousands of crores idle when people across India face floods, cyclones, droughts and other disasters?
Open on XPawan Khera
@Pawankhera · Congress · Rajya Sabha, CWC
9 Feb 2026
PMO blocks Lok Sabha Secretariat from taking up questions & matters on PM CARES Fund, Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund and National Defence Fund. Democracy’s oxygen saturation levels are falling rapidly!
Open on XRahul Gandhi
@RahulGandhi · Congress · Leader of Opposition, Lok Sabha
17 Dec 2020
PM Cares- 'Chaliye, transparency ko vanakkam'!
Open on XIndian National Congress
@INCIndia · Congress
11 May 2022
You donated your money to the PM Cares Fund. You thought it would help the country deal with the disaster that was Covid. What did you get in return? No hospital beds, no oxygen, no medicines, and no relief.
Open on XIndian National Congress
@INCIndia · Congress
2 Jun 2022
Donations to PM Cares fund were not used as they should have- we saw that during the deadly second wave. But only in BJP’s New India can funds donated by the people, be loaned back to the people, at an interest. Only BJP can turn a relief fund into a profitable business scheme.
Open on XIndian National Congress
@INCIndia · Congress
19 Nov 2024
The present CAG has been quiet and has gone into a slumber for the past 10 years. They have even refused to audit the PM CARES Fund, which has money that comes from the PSEs.
Open on XAam Aadmi Party
@AamAadmiParty · AAP
11 Feb 2026
आख़िर PM Cares फंड की जानकारियों को क्यों छुपा रही है मोदी सरकार? जनता की गाढ़ी कमाई से बने PM Cares फंड का पैसा कहां खर्च हुआ?
Open on XAll India Trinamool Congress
@AITCofficial · TMC
8 May 2023
PM CARES ki aap chronology samajhiye! Established by Govt yet not public. RTI filing not applicable. Crores of funds unspent. WHERE are the funds going?
Open on XAll India Trinamool Congress
@AITCofficial · TMC
12 Aug 2023
BJP’s endless failures — PM Cares Fund: SHAM. PM @narendramodi, your DECEIT is out in the open!
Open on X10 — How to read the numbers
Each card opens that year’s receipts-and-payments PDF on pmcares.gov.in.
2019–20
SARC & Associates
Signed 9 July 2020
Open PDF
2020–21
SARC & Associates
Signed 11 January 2022
Open PDF
2021–22
SARC & Associates
Signed 30 September 2022
Open PDF
2022–23
SARC & Associates
Signed 29 March 2024
Open PDF
2023–24
KKC & Associates LLP
Signed 7 August 2026
Open PDF
2024–25
KKC & Associates LLP
Signed 7 August 2026
Open PDF
