Congress National President Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday questioned the spending and accountability of the PM CARES Fund, citing its financial statement for 2024-25 after the audit report and asking why an emergency fund was accumulating thousands of crores while only a small portion of its balance was spent during the year.
He said this amounted to barely 0.01 per cent of the fund’s closing balance and questioned the rationale behind maintaining such a large corpus in a fund created to respond to emergencies. The Congress president also questioned how an emergency fund could continue accumulating thousands of crores when its expenditure during 2024-25 was a fraction of its closing balance. He said both the PM CARES Fund and the Ram Mandir Trust were announced under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s oversight and receive donations.
He asked why a fund bearing the Prime Minister’s name remained outside what he called the “ordinary mechanisms of public scrutiny”. Kharge said in his post. It accepts CSR contributions and tax-deductible donations,” Kharge said.
In an X post, Kharge raised questions over what he described as the lack of public accountability surrounding the fund. “PM does not CARE: Public authority without public accountability? “The Prime Minister is its Chairman. The Defence, Home and Finance Ministers are its Trustees. The questions raised by the Congress president come amid his wider criticism of the Prime Minister over the functioning and oversight of institutions and funds associated with the government.
