On Tuesday, a plea that sought its direction to the Centre to transfer contributions made to the PM CARES Fund for fighting the Covid-19 pandemic to the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) has been rejected by The Supreme Court.

Hearing a petition filed by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation, a bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan and comprising justices RS Reddy and M R Shah said that voluntary contribution can always be made to the NDRF. The NGO had claimed the Centre was “refraining from divulging information” about the money “contributed to the PM CARES Fund till date”.

On March 28, The Centre had set up the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund essentially to deal with emergency situations such as the Covid-19 outbreak, and extend relief to the affected.  The Prime Minister is the ex-officio chairman of the fund, while the ministers of defence, home and finance are its ex-officio trustees.

After the formation of PM CARES fund, the Opposition parties, including the Congress, raised a question on setting up such fund to overcome the situation when the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund already exists for such purposes.They also alleged that PM CARES had been designed to avoid audit by the Controller and Auditor General and would result in a lack of transparency about the source and use of these contributions.

Hundreds of crores of rupees has been contributed to the PM CARES fund by Many companies (public and private), individuals and government departments. Companies are also allowed to use their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds to contribute to the PM CARES, whereas this facility is not available for the state-level Covid-19 funds set up by chief ministers.

The Centre had opposed any transfer of the PM CARES funds, in its submission to the apex court. ” It mentioned that here are several funds which are either established earlier or now for carrying out various relief works. PM CARES is one such fund with voluntary donations,” the centre had said in its affidavit. It argued that “mere existence of a statutory fund would not prohibit creation of a different fund like PM CARES Fund, which provides for voluntary donations”.

The centre had also said the NDRF, as stipulated under Section 46 of Disaster Management (DM) Act, 2005, consisted primarily of the fund in the form of budgetary provisions made by the central government and state governments without any private contribution.

After Tuesday’s verdict, a political combat broke out. . BJP President Nadda said it is a resounding blow to the “nefarious” designs of senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his band of “rent-a-cause” activists. “The SC judgment is a body blow to transparency & accountability of Govt to people,” tweeted, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala.