Why Is PM CARES Fund Keeping Large Sums Idle? RTI Activist Questions Rising Corpus
The PM CARES Fund has come under renewed scrutiny after its latest financial disclosures showed that its corpus had risen to about ₹8,452 crore by the end of the financial year 2024–25, even as spending during the year remained extremely low.
According to the latest financial data reported on August 18, 2026, the fund received about ₹479.96 crore in donations during 2024–25. However, its expenditure during the year was only around ₹87.85 lakh. The resulting accumulation has raised questions over how quickly money donated for emergency and distress relief is being deployed.
The issue is particularly striking because the fund was established in March 2020 with the stated objective of providing assistance during public-health emergencies, calamities and other situations involving distress. Its official objectives include supporting healthcare infrastructure, pharmaceutical facilities, relevant research and financial assistance to affected people.
The latest figures also indicate that the fund continues to earn substantial income from sources other than fresh donations. During 2024–25, interest income was reported at approximately ₹475.14 crore, while around ₹324.65 crore was reportedly recovered from implementing agencies. These inflows helped push the available corpus higher despite the sharp reduction in expenditure.
This has prompted questions from activists and critics about whether such a large emergency fund should remain largely unspent when its stated purpose is to respond to emergencies and provide assistance to people in distress.
The central question is not simply how much money the fund possesses, but why the pace of deployment has fallen so dramatically after the extraordinary spending seen during the COVID-19 period.
During 2020–21, when the pandemic was at its peak, expenditure from the fund was substantially higher. Subsequent years have seen considerably lower spending, while the corpus has continued to accumulate.
The government, however, maintains that PM CARES is a public charitable trust and is financed entirely through voluntary contributions. According to its official website, it receives no budgetary support from the government and the money is to be used for activities falling within the objectives of the trust.
The fund is headed by the Prime Minister as ex-officio chairman, while the Union ministers of Defence, Home Affairs and Finance are ex-officio trustees. The trust can also undertake assistance and relief measures as determined by its Board of Trustees.
Transparency has been a separate and longstanding point of contention. The question of whether PM CARES falls within the scope of the Right to Information Act has been repeatedly raised. In a July 2025 Central Information Commission-related proceeding, the position recorded was that PM CARES is not treated as a public authority under Section 2(h) of the RTI Act, while information about the fund is made available through its official website.
The controversy therefore has two interconnected dimensions: the size and utilisation of the fund, and the degree of public scrutiny over decisions concerning its money.
For supporters of the fund, maintaining a substantial reserve can be justified by the very nature of an emergency fund. A large balance can allow rapid mobilisation of resources when an unforeseen national crisis occurs.
For critics, however, the latest numbers raise a different concern: if donations continue to accumulate faster than money is deployed, the fund risks becoming a large financial reserve rather than an actively utilised emergency-relief mechanism.
The debate is likely to intensify as the ₹8,452-crore figure becomes the focus of questions from RTI activists, civil-society groups and political parties. The immediate issue is whether the government and the trustees should provide greater public explanation about the fund’s investment, spending priorities and plans for deploying its accumulated resources.
At the heart of the controversy is a straightforward question: when citizens and organisations contribute money specifically for emergencies and distress, how much of that money should remain idle, and how much should be put to work for the public?
