PM CARES swells to Rs 8,452 crore, 93% of funds in FDs; interest income matches donation

The balance in the PM CARES Fund has swollen to Rs 8,452 crore by March 2025, shows the audit for 2024-25, which was delayed by a year. The audit statement reveals that 93% of the money is parked in fixed deposits, and the interest it earned matched the donations it received.

In Short

• Domestic donations reached Rs 479.04 crore, and foreign donations Rs 92.83 lakh
• Interest income of about Rs 475 crore almost matched fresh domestic donations
• Nearly all annual spending went to the PM CARES for Children Scheme

The PM CARES Fund, which was launched by PM Narendra Modi in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, had grown with Rs 8,452 crore in corpus at the end of March 2025, revealed the latest audit statement for the financial year 2024-25 on its official website. Interestingly, 93% of the total corpus was turned into fixed deposits, and the interest earned in 2024-25 nearly matched the donations received in the PM CARES Fund.

Of the Rs 8,452 crore closing balance as of March 31, 2025, Rs 7,846.65 crore, or nearly 93%, was held in fixed deposits (FDs). The rest was held as cash in Scheduled banks.

The fund spent only Rs 87.85 lakh during the financial year, according to the audit statement.

The latest disclosure on the fund comes more than a year after the 2024-25 financial year ended on March 31, 2025. The statement was audited and signed in the first week of August 2026.

According to the official PM CARES website, the Fund was set up as a public charitable trust with the "primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation" and providing "relief to the affected". Its objectives include responding to public health emergencies and natural or man-made disasters, upgrading healthcare infrastructure, funding research and providing financial assistance to affected people.

The latest audit statement also shows that over Rs 324 crore came back to PM CARES Fund as refunds from implementing agencies like DRDO and NHAI. However, the one-page statement does not explain which agencies returned the money, why it was refunded or what projects the amount had originally been released for.

Activists, journalists and chartered accountants have questioned the low expenditure, the large amount lying in bank deposits, the delay in releasing the accounts and the absence of key details behind some of the entries in the PM CARES statement.

PM CARES has faced questions over transparency since its launch in 2020, and most recently, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) called for a probe of the Fund while hitting back at an activist who had demanded the outfit's founder, Abhijeet Dipke's "funding".

In January, Tamil Nadu's then Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin had alleged that PM CARES had collected nearly Rs 30,000 crore during Covid-19 but lacked transparency over its utilisation.

HOW PM CARES CORPUS GREW

The PM CARES Fund entered 2024-25 with Rs 7,173 crore in its bank accounts. Of this, Rs 6,641.56 crore was already held in FDs, while Rs 531.46 crore was in savings bank accounts.

During the financial year, it received Rs 479.04 crore in domestic donations and Rs 92.83 lakh in foreign donations, with the total at around Rs 480 crore.

The accumulated corpus generated substantial income for the Fund. It earned Rs 469.37 crore as interest on fixed deposits and another Rs 5.77 crore as interest on savings bank accounts. Together, interest earnings stood at around Rs 475 crore.

This means PM CARES earned almost as much from interest during the year as it received in fresh domestic donations.

It also received Rs 13.49 lakh as a refund of TDS on interest on fixed deposits from banks.

TDS, or Tax Deducted at Source, is tax deducted before interest income is paid, which can later be refunded if excess tax has been deducted.

By the end of March 2025, the Fund's balance had increased from Rs 7,173 crore to Rs 8,452 crore. Its FD amount alone increased by around Rs 1,205 crore during the year, from Rs 6,641.56 crore on March 31, 2024 to Rs 7,846.65 crore on April 1, 2025.

PM CARES FUND: RS 8,452 CRORE IN BANK, RS 87.85 LAKH SPENT

While the bank balance of the PM CARES grew, expenditure from it during 2024-25 remained limited.

The statement records total payments of Rs 87.85 lakh. Of this, Rs 87.84 lakh went towards the PM CARES for Children Scheme. The only other expenditure listed is Rs 451 as bank and SMS charges.

The Fund consequently closed the year with Rs 8,452.06 crore. Apart from Rs 7,846.65 crore in FDs, it had Rs 605.41 crore in savings bank accounts.

Transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj questioned the low utilisation of the available money and asked why such a large amount was being kept idle.

"A fund set up to help citizens during disasters, which has accumulated thousands of crores (including from foreign sources), is shrouded in secrecy," Bhardwaj wrote on X, raising questions after the latest audit statement.

WHAT ABOUT THE RS 324 CRORE REFUND?

Another entry that has drawn questions is the Rs 324.66 crore listed as "Refund from Implementing Agencies".

The amount is nearly four times the Rs 84.31 crore that the statement shows was returned by implementing agencies in the previous financial year.

Bhardwaj asked which implementing agencies had returned the money and why. She also questioned what the original payments had been made for and whether any refunds were linked to faulty equipment.

There is, however, a reference to "Note 11" against the implementing agency refund. At the bottom, the statement also says there are accompanying notes to the financial statements numbered 1 to 16.

Bhardwaj questioned why these accompanying notes were not uploaded along with the statement, as they could contain further details about the entries in the accounts.

QUESTIONS RAISED OVER DELAY OF AUDIT STATEMENT RELEASE

The accounts relate to the financial year that ended on March 31, 2025. However, the statement carries signatures dated August 6 and August 7, 2026, around 16 months after the financial year ended.

Pune-based Chartered Accountant Atul Modani claimed the audits for FY 2023-24 and FY 2024-25 were done together after a gap of nearly two years. He also pointed out that the audited statement uploaded on the website did not display a Unique Document Identification Number, or UDIN, and said this could have been an oversight that should be corrected.

Chartered Accountant Ruchita Vaghani on X also questioned the gap between the money coming into the Fund and what was spent during the year.

WHY PM CARES FUND COURTED CONTROVERSY AFTER LAUNCH IN 2020

PM CARES Fund drew criticism soon after its launch in March 2020. Questions were asked over the need for a new fund when the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) and PM National Relief Fund already existed.

Experts and activists also took on the Fund asking why PM CARES was not subject to CAG audit and RTI scrutiny.

The Narendra Modi-led Centre maintained that PM CARES was a public charitable trust, funded entirely through voluntary contributions without budgetary or government money, and is not a "public authority", and therefore, not within the ambit of the RTI Act.

In August 2020, the Supreme Court rejected a plea seeking transfer of PM CARES money to the NDRF, holding that the two were "entirely different funds with different objects and purposes" and that donations to PM CARES could not be ordered to be transferred to the NDRF.

The court also noted that while the NDRF is audited by the CAG, PM CARES, being a public charitable trust, did not require a CAG audit on that basis.

The recent statement of the Fund has therefore put the spotlight not just on how much money PM CARES holds, but also on how little of it was spent in 2024-25. Five years after the Fund was created during the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly Rs 7,847 crore of its Rs 8,452-crore balance was sitting in FDs at the end of the financial year. The interest it is earning is almost matching the donation it is attracting.

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