Rs 20,000 yearly to each school-going little one orphaned by the COVID-19 pandemic — this was one of many main guarantees made by the Union authorities as a part of the PM CARES Fund. However within the monetary yr 2024-2025, solely a mere Rs 88 lakh was launched for this goal. The quantity, if divided among the many 3,383 kids the federal government listed as beneficiaries of the PM CARES for Youngsters Scheme, would come to solely Rs Rs 2,596 per little one.
Actually, this Rs 88 lakh – making up 0.001% of the Fund’s corpus – was the one quantity the Union authorities spent throughout 2024-25. By the tip of FY ’25, the Fund had Rs 8,452 crore. Round 93% of that is stored in fastened deposits.
The numbers have been revealed when the PM CARES Fund launched its receipts and funds accounts for the final two monetary years, 2023-24 and 2024-25, after a protracted delay.
The numbers that don’t add up
The PM CARES for Youngsters was launched in Could 2021, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi promising assist for kids who misplaced mother and father in the course of the COVID pandemic. It guarantees help for training, medical health insurance, assist for boarding and lodging, and Rs 10 lakh once they flip 18. The PM CARES for Youngsters web site says 4,543 functions have been accredited thus far.
The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment the Lok Sabha in December 2025 that beneath the PM CARES for Youngsters scheme, an annual scholarship of Rs 20,000 is offered for every little one – a month-to-month stipend of Rs 1,000 plus an annual allowance of Rs 8,000 in the direction of college charges, books, uniform, footwear, and so forth.
However spending on PM CARES for Youngsters has dropped drastically, from Rs 346 crore in FY ’23 to Rs 15 crore in FY ’24, to simply Rs 88 lakh in FY ’25.
The Union authorities it transferred these funds to three,383 kids in 2024-25. This could make up a complete of Rs 6.76 crore. However the quantity launched to the scheme in FY ’25 , based on the PM CARES report, was Rs 87,84,840.
This is able to quantity to solely Rs 2,596 for every of the three,383 kids, or Rs 20,000 for simply 439 children.
93% in Mounted Deposits
The stories additionally present that the Fund has moved an enormous chunk of its corpus into a set deposit. By the tip of FY ’24, it had Rs 6,641 crore in fastened deposits, on which it reported receiving pursuits of Rs 469 crore throughout FY ’25.
This practically equals the quantity acquired in home donations to the Fund throughout the identical interval, that’s, Rs 479 crore. One other Rs 325 crore was acquired in refunds from implementing businesses.
By the tip of FY ’25, the Fund had stored Rs 7,847 crore in fastened deposits, which is 93% of its corpus. Solely Rs 605 crore was stored in a financial savings account. This, regardless of many states going through disasters similar to floods, cyclones, landslides, chilly waves, and so forth. searching for funds for reduction, and the Union authorities not assembly their calls for.
Journalist Poonam Agarwal, who has reported on the opacity round PM CARES, mentioned that whereas the Fund was set as much as cope with ‘any form of emergency or misery state of affairs’, the cash is now mendacity idle.
“So many disasters occur yearly, together with the current Assam floods. Why are they not utilizing this cash over there?” she requested.
States similar to , , and have identified that that they had acquired solely a small fraction of funds looked for reduction for floods, landslides or drought.
A Comptroller and Auditor Common of India (CAG) report lately revealed that the Union authorities has not spent even half of the funds beneath the Nationwide Catastrophe Response Fund (NDRF). Of the entire Rs 11,474 crore sanctioned beneath NDRF as help for calamities of extreme nature, solely Rs 5,356 crore was transferred to states.
In contrast to the NDRF, Poonam mentioned within the case of PM CARES, individuals have donated their very own cash or have been required to forego a part of their salaries with the assumption that it could be used to strengthen the general public well being sector.
Calls for for transparency
The PM CARES Fund is a ‘public charitable belief’ arrange on March 27, 2020, quickly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. It was fashioned to cope with emergency conditions such because the pandemic and was registered beneath the Registration Act, 1908. Nevertheless, since then, the one bills proven by the Fund are in the direction of COVID-related bills similar to ventilators, oxygen vegetation, vaccines, and advantages to kids who misplaced their mother and father to COVID.
Since its inception, the PM CARES Fund has remained exterior the ambit of the Proper to Info (RTI) Act, regardless of constant efforts by RTI activists similar to Lokesh Batra, Anjali Bharadwaj, and others, to demand transparency.
