PM CARES Fund: What Is It and Where Is the ₹8,452 Crore?
The PM CARES Fund has again come under intense public scrutiny after its latest audited accounts showed that its corpus had reached approximately ₹8,452 crore as of March 31, 2025.
The figure represents a substantial increase from the previous year. The fund’s balance rose by roughly ₹1,279 crore in a year, even though its expenditure during 2024–25 was only ₹87.85 lakh.
The latest figures have triggered a basic but important question: if PM CARES was established as a dedicated mechanism for responding to emergencies and distress, why was such a small portion of its accumulated corpus used during the year?
The PM CARES Fund was established in March 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. Its stated objectives include providing assistance during public-health emergencies, natural or man-made calamities and other distress situations. It can also support healthcare infrastructure, research and other forms of emergency assistance.
The fund is a public charitable trust. The Prime Minister is its ex-officio chairperson, while the Union ministers of Defence, Home Affairs and Finance are ex-officio trustees.
Importantly, the government says PM CARES does not receive budgetary support. It is financed through voluntary contributions from individuals and organisations, with donations also eligible for specified tax and CSR benefits.
So, where is the ₹8,452 crore?
According to reports based on the latest accounts, approximately ₹7,846 crore of the corpus was held in fixed deposits, while around ₹605 crore was maintained in savings-bank accounts. In other words, the overwhelming majority of the corpus was not sitting as idle cash but was parked in financial instruments, generating interest.
That distinction matters. Calling the entire corpus “idle” would be technically imprecise because fixed deposits generate returns. But the more substantive question is why money collected for emergency assistance has accumulated to such a large level while annual disbursement has become extremely small.
Interest income has become a major contributor to the fund’s growth. During 2024–25, interest income was reported at roughly ₹475 crore, while about ₹324.66 crore was also received back from implementing agencies. These inflows helped increase the corpus despite the very low expenditure.
The spending figures are particularly striking when compared with previous years.
Expenditure under the PM CARES for Children scheme, which supports children who lost parents or guardians during the COVID-19 pandemic, reportedly fell from about ₹346 crore in 2022–23 to ₹15.37 crore in 2023–24 and just ₹87.85 lakh in 2024–25.
This sharp decline has become one of the central points of criticism. Activists and political opponents argue that the existence of a multi-thousand-crore reserve should be accompanied by greater clarity about when and how the money will be deployed.
There is, however, another side to the argument.
PM CARES was specifically designed as an emergency reserve. Maintaining a substantial corpus can allow the trustees to respond quickly when a major national emergency occurs. The absence of large expenditure in a particular year does not necessarily mean that the fund has no purpose.
The government’s stated position is that the trustees have the authority to determine the criteria and manner in which money is disbursed according to the objectives of the trust.
The controversy is therefore less about whether every rupee must be spent immediately and more about accountability, transparency and the criteria governing deployment.
The latest accounts were also released after a significant delay. Reports note that the financial statements for the year ending March 31, 2025 were signed only on August 6, 2026, before being made public. That delay has added another dimension to questions surrounding disclosure.
The issue has now moved beyond the question of the fund’s size. Critics are asking what emergency situations qualify for assistance, who decides when money is released, how much has been sanctioned but remains unspent, and why hundreds of crores returned by implementing agencies have not apparently translated into fresh disbursements.
At the same time, the official PM CARES position remains that the fund is intended for emergencies and distress and that its resources are to be used according to the trust’s objectives.
The ₹8,452-crore figure, therefore, tells only part of the story.
The larger story is about how an emergency fund should balance preparedness with utilisation, how quickly donations should reach intended beneficiaries, and what level of public disclosure is appropriate when a fund has accumulated thousands of crores.
For RTI activists and other critics, the question is simple: if citizens and companies contributed money with the expectation that it would help people in emergencies, should the public be given a clearer account of why such a large corpus remains invested and what specific circumstances would trigger its deployment?
For the government and the trustees, the answer rests on the fund’s stated purpose: it is a reserve intended to be available when a major emergency or distress situation requires it.
The debate over ₹8,452 crore is consequently unlikely to end with the publication of the accounts. It has opened a much broader discussion about emergency funding, public trust, financial transparency and the responsibility attached to managing a national relief corpus of this scale.
