Summary:
New Delhi: After Public sector companies, a sweeping range of educational institutions, from Navodaya schools for rural students to IITs, IIMs and central universities, have together contributed Rs 21.81 crore to the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) fund — mainly from staff salaries, RTI records accessed by The Indian Express show.
The Prime Minister’s Office, which manages the fund, has declined to furnish details of contributions received, saying that PM CARES is “not a public authority under the ambit of…the RTI Act”.
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New Delhi: After Public sector companies, a sweeping range of educational institutions, from Navodaya schools for rural students to IITs, IIMs and central universities, have together contributed Rs 21.81 crore to the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) fund — mainly from staff salaries, RTI records accessed by The Indian Express show.
The Prime Minister’s Office, which manages the fund, has declined to furnish details of contributions received, saying that PM CARES is “not a public authority under the ambit of…the RTI Act”.
The fund was set up following the Covid outbreak, and had a corpus of Rs 3,076.62 crore on March 31, 2020, just four days within launch, of which Rs 3,075.85 crore were listed as “voluntary contributions”, according to its official website.
On August 19, The Indian Express reported that 38 PSUs used their Corporate Social Responsibility funds to together contribute over Rs 2,105 crore.
But for several educational institutions (see chart), the “voluntary contributions” came from salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff — and in some cases, even from pensioners and students.
Consider some of the key contributors from the 82 educational institutions and top organisations in the sector that responded to RTI requests from The Indian Express:
* Rs 7.48 crore was contributed by the Navoday Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS) alone, with “donation from the employees” at its headquarters and all eight regional offices.
The NVS runs over 600 Navodaya schools in rural areas.
* 11 central universities contributed Rs 3.39 crore.
Among them, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) topped with Rs 1.33 crore followed by Banaras Hindu University (BHU) with over Rs 1.14 crore and Delhi-based Central Sanskrit University (CSU) with Rs 27.38 lakh.
CSU’s Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) R G Murli Krishnan responded that while Rs 19.04 lakh was from “Sansthan contribution”, the rest was from “Adarsh contribution”, without providing any details.