Supreme Court on Tuesday has rejected the plea filed by CPIL seeking transfer of all the money collected in the PM-CARES Fund to the National Disaster Relief Fund. SC said, “Money from the PM Cares Fund need not be transferred to NDRF.”
“The PM Cares fund is valid as a public charitable fund. There is no need to transfer all contributions to NDRF,” said the Supreme Court bench comprising of Justice Ashok Bhushan, Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice MR Shah.
However, the bench added that any individual or institution can contribute to the disaster relief fund.
The bench also observed, “The National Disaster Management plan created in November, 2019 is enough to tackle Covid-19. No need to create fresh action plan or separate minimum standards of care.”
Supreme Court took up the plea filed by an NGO, Centre of Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) on Tuesday, seeking transfer of all the contributions to the National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) from the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. NDRF is a statutory fund created under section 46 of the Disaster Management Act of 2005 (DM Act).
Earlier, the top court has reserved its order on the plea filed by CPIL through activist lawyer Prashant Bhusan.
Prime Minister is the ex-officio chairman of the PM-CARES fund and defence and home and finance ministers are the ex-officio trustees of the charitable fund.
Opposition parties had been questioning the setting up of this new fund to deal with pandemic COVID-19 even when Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) is already there.
