Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday reserved its order on a plea that the funds received by the PM CARES Fund be transfered to the National Disaster Response Fund for tackling the Covid-19 pandemic.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, told a bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan that the PM CARES Fund is a “voluntary fund” while funds to the NDRF and SDRF are made available through budgetary allocations.
Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for petitioner NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), said they are not doubting the bonafide of anyone but PM CARES Fund is allegedly in contravention of provisions of the Disaster Management Act.
Dushyant claimed that an audit of the NDRF is being conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) but the government has said the audit of the PM CARES Fund will be done by private auditors.
The Supreme Court has reserved its order on the issue raised in the petition regarding transferring the money collected under the PM CARES Fund to the NDRF.
On June 17, the court had asked the Centre to file its response on the plea, which has sought a direction that all the contributions made by individuals and institutions for the COVID-19 pandemic should be credited to the NDRF, rather than to the PM CARES Fund.
Now Centre reply came after senior advocate Dushyant Dave, told a bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, RS Reddy and MR Shah that the government was rightly scrutinizing contributions to the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. And contributions of the PM Cares Fund should likely be scanned.
He said while NDRF was subject to auditing by the CAG, the PM Cares Fund was scrutinised by independent auditors. “Why can’t it be made subject to public scrutiny?” he asked.
