The latest audit report on the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund, covering FY 2023-24 and FY 2024-25, has triggered a familiar political storm. The opposition and anti-government voices joined forces to target the Modi government by spreading misinformation regarding the audit report by distorting and misrepresenting facts and numbers to target the Modi government.
The audit report revealed that the fund had a corpus of ₹8,452.07 crore as of March 31, 2025, with ₹7,846.65 crore, or nearly 93%, held in fixed deposits (FDs) and the remaining amount being held as cash in scheduled banks. At the end of FY 2023-24, the Fund had a total amount of ₹7,173 crore in its bank accounts. Of this, ₹6,641.56 crore was already held in FDs, while ₹531.46 crore was in savings bank accounts.
During 2023-24, the fund received domestic donations amounting to ₹681.8 crore, while foreign donations totalled ₹1.13 crore. Subsequently, during fiscal year 2024-25, the Fund received ₹479.04 crore in domestic donations and ₹92.83 lakh in foreign donations, totalling around ₹480 crore. It earned ₹469.37 crore as interest on fixed deposits and another ₹5.77 crore as interest on savings bank accounts. Together, interest earnings stood at around ₹475 crore.
The audit statement clearly disclosed year-wise donations received, holdings and the expenditure made from the fund money. As soon as the audit report was out, the opposition grabbed the opportunity to attack the government by peddling lies and misinformation about the audit. The opposition’s allegations ranged from the Fund being underutilised, the audit not being conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), to the lack of transparency.
According to the audit statement, an amount of ₹87.85 lakh was spent from the fund during FY 2024-25. This number was misrepresented by the opposition and anti-government voices to claim that the government failed to utilise the Fund money. Mounting an attack on the government, the Congress Party presented the low amount of expenditure as an anomaly and accused the government of not disbursing the money from the Fund even during various natural disasters that happened across the country.
“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,” Congress MP Pawan Khera wrote on X.
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.
— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 ಪವನ್ ಖೇರಾ (@Pawankhera) August 18, 2026
₹8,452 crore sitting idle while people suffer.
PM CARES? Hardly https://t.co/rKjyORkl4r
India Today ‘journalist’ Rajdeep Sardesai echoed the allegations levelled by the Congress and tried to peddle misinformation regarding the expenditure from the Fund. He claimed that the government spent merely ₹87.85 lakh in the six years since the formation of the Fund.
INTERESTING: Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund, which was set up in March 2020 during COVID to deal with emergency/distress situations, has accumulated a corpus of Rs 8,452 crore by end of FY 2024-25, but just Rs 87 lakh was…
— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) August 18, 2026
Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) Co-convener, Ashutosh Ranka, termed the PM CARES Fund audit report as part of the government’s “propaganda”. Ranka also raised questions regarding the low expenditure from the Fund, and asked why it did not fall under the ambit of RTI. Earlier, the CJP had called for a probe into the PM CARES Fund.
Did PMO have to get the data released to be able to continue its propaganda? 😂@VijayGajeraO I am sure you had to fight hard with your paw paw to get this data released.
— Ashutosh Ranka (@AshutoshRanka) August 18, 2026
Now get your paw paw to also answer what @AnjaliB_ is asking. https://t.co/OHIlf1JWOI
Other similar voices questioned as to why the Fund was not audited by the CAG but by private accountants, even though the fund allegedly takes taxpayers’ money.
PM Cares Fund is not audited by CAG even though it takes tax payers funds. It is audited by M/s KKC & Associates LLP. The CEO of the firm is Gautam Shah. Auditor is Tejas Parikh.
— Joy (@Joydas) August 18, 2026
Here is a rebuttal of the allegations levelled against the government regarding the source, handling, utilisation and the audit of the PM CARES Fund.
When and why the PM CARES Fund was set up
The PM CARES Fund was constituted on March 27, 2020, following the first countrywide lockdown that was announced by the government at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The government’s intention behind setting up the Fund was to create a swift and flexible mechanism to receive and deploy donations during an emergency situation. It was created as a dedicated public charitable trust to collect voluntary donations and respond quickly to emergencies. Though it was formed to address the emergency resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, its objectives extended beyond that particular crisis.
It exists in addition to the existing Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) and the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF). The PMNRF is a public charitable trust meant for providing relief to victims of disasters/accidents and medical situations. The NDRF is constituted under and governed by the Disaster Management Act and has its own statutory audit and utilisation rules. Both these funds were procedurally slower and addressed specific emergencies.
The PM CARES Fund, on the other hand, has broader objectives, which include but are not limited to providing support, relief or assistance of any kind relating to a public health emergency or any other kind of emergency, calamity or distress, either man-made or natural. The Fund is financed entirely through voluntary donations and does not receive any budgetary support.
Why the Fund is not audited by the CAG and not covered under the RTI
Ever since its inception, the Fund has been surrounded by controversies and unfounded allegations. The critics of the government have been calling the Fund unnecessary, claiming that the PMNRF and the NDRF already existed as emergency funds. As a result of these allegations, a plea was filed in the Supreme Court seeking the transfer of PM CARES money to the NDRF.
However, the Supreme Court rejected the pleas, holding that the two were “entirely different funds with different objects and purposes” and that donations to PM CARES could not be ordered to be transferred to the NDRF. On the issue of the PM CARES Fund not falling within the ambit of RTI, the Court noted that the Fund is a public charitable trust, funded entirely through voluntary contributions without budgetary or government money, and is not a “public authority”, and therefore, not eligible to be covered under the RTI Act.
The fact that the Fund not does recieve any budgetary support and is entirely financed by voluntary contributions is the reason that it is treated like other privately administered charitable trust bodies, which are also audited by private chartered accountants rather than the CAG, and are also outside RTI’s scope.
Is the Fund underutilised?
The opposition has been insinuating a scam in the Fund money by highlighting that the money released from the Fund in FY 2024-25 was a minuscule percentage of the total corpus. The number of ₹87.85 lakh being quoted by the opposition to allege underutilisation of the Fund demonstrates the expenditure for FY 2024-25.
In the preceding financial year, i.e. 2023-24, the expenditure from the Fund was around ₹15.59 crore. During FY 2020-21, around ₹3,976 crore was spent, including around ₹1,393 crore for COVID-19 vaccine doses, ₹1,311 crore for 50,000 domestically manufactured ventilators, ₹201 crore for 162 pressure-swing adsorption oxygen-generation plants, and ₹50 crore for temporary hospitals and testing laboratories.
The reason that the expenditure from the Fund significantly dropped in the year 2024-25 is simply that no pandemic-scale emergency happened in the year, which would have required disbursements of large sums of money similar to 2020-21 and 2021-22. By definition, an emergency reserve fund is not required to spend its entire balance each year. An emergency fund is supposed to be available for a sudden or unpredictable emergency event. It is expected to be utilised during periods of crisis.
Merely because the money has been lying unused in the Fund does not prove any scam. The audit report makes a clear statement of the Fund money received, used or invested, leaving no scope for concerns relating to misuse or misappropriation. And money not being used is not the same as money being misused; the former is proof of transparency, and the latter may create an offence.
