At a time when entire country, including political parties, arerallying to do their bit by contributing in the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has refused to share any details pertaining to the fund, including political parties’ contributions.
Four RTI queries filed
In the month of May, Mumbai-based RTI activist Anil Galgali had filed four RTI applications, including contributions made by all political parties, with PMO. He had also sought details of total donation received, numbers of bounced cheques, amount disbursed to the states and the nature of work, amount spend and balance amount in pm care fund.
No info on contribution made by political parties
According to RTI Activist Anil Galgali, PMO refused to share details of all four queries, including contributions made by the political parties into the fund in guise of section 2 (h) of the RTI Act 2005, citing The PM-CARES fund is not a public authority. PMO, however, referred Galgali to visit the website pmcares.gov.in saying that the relevant info with respect of fund can be seen by visiting it. According to Galgali, it indicates that perhaps political parties are shying away to contribute in this coffer.
No info on how many cheques bounced ?
It’s a usual phenomenon that whenever such contributions are made through cheques, it generally get bounced owing to several factors. Galgali had sought the numbers and respective amount of cheque bounced in this regard, but PMO declined to share it.
No info on money given to the states from the fund?
In his third query, applicant Galgali had sought the details of the money disbursed to the state governments from the fund, to which PMO resorted the same route and did not furnish information. Galgali wanted to know at the time when all the state governments are keenly and eagerly looking for the fund from the union government, how much money they have received from them.
No info on money spent to fight Covid-19
Galgali, in his fourth and last query, had requested PMO to share the information of the money spent to control the pandemic, because complaints are flooding about the basic requirements like PPE kits, masks, testing kits etc. But PMO refused to share this details too and advised to visit the PM CARES website.
Even website hiding the details
Reacting on the denial of information, Galgali said, “When I visited, there were not a single information with regards to my query. Though, I did find prime minister’s Narendra Modi’s photos on website, despite being not a public authority. I found it strange.”
Upload all details on portal
Galgali has demanded PMO to upload all the relevant details of the PM-CARES fund at the website itself so that people don’t need to file RTI query saying that this will be best practice to follow the path of transparency. “At one point, Modi encourages people to ask questions from the government, but at the second side, his government is hiding the extremely relevant information,” he reacted.
Notably, The PM CARES Fund was created on 28 March 2020, following the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The fund will be used for combating, containment and relief efforts against the coronavirus outbreak and similar pandemic like situations in the future.
