An affidavit filed by an Under-Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Offices (PMO) who is discharging his functions in the PM Cares Trust on honorary basis, has said the trust functions with transparency and its funds are audited by an auditor – a chartered accountant drawn from the panel prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

The affidavit was filed in response to a petition seeking a direction to declare the PM CARES Fund a ‘state’ under the Constitution to ensure transparency in its functioning.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Amit Bansal has fixed the matter for further hearing on 27 September.

“To ensure transparency, the audited report is put on the official website of the trust along with the details of utilization of funds received by the trust, says the affidavit filed by Pradeep Kumar Srivastava, Under Secretary at the PMO.

The trust functions on the principles of transparency and public good in larger public interest like any other charitable trust and therefore, cannot have any objection in uploading all its resolutions on its website to ensure transparency, it said, while reiterating that the trust’s fund is not a fund of Government of India and the amount does not go in the consolidated Fund of India.

The order came on two separate petitions filed by advocates Gaurav Kumar Bansal and Reepak Kansal which claimed that Covid being a disaster notified under the Disaster Management Act (DMA) 2005, the Central government will be bound by Section 12 (iii) of the Act providing for the ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakh for those who died during the disaster. On March 14, 2020, the Centre had declared COVID-19 to be a disaster under DMA.

The Court said under Section 12(iii) of DMA, NDMA needed to issue guidelines on the ex-gratia under minimum standards of relief as the word used in the Act is “shall”.

“The statutory duty is cast upon the authority to frame guidelines of the ex-gratia. By not recommending the ex-gratia, it can be said that the national authority (NDMA) failed to perform its statutory duty under Section 12 of DMA,” said the bench of justices Ashok Bhushan and MR Shah.

The guidelines for the ex-gratia would be guided by the requirement, availability of funds, and money allocated for other measures needed for mitigation, prevention, and relief about COVID-19.

The Centre had argued that while passing the DMA, the legislature didn’t contemplate a pandemic situation as the Act was meant to provide relief for one-time events such as earth earthquakes, cyclones, etc, or few incidents taking place periodically for some time. Further, the Centre argued that during Covid-19, it is adopted a multi-pronged approach in containing the harm caused by disaster by augmenting hospital, infrastructure, medical, supplies, drugs, insurance to health care providers, and food safety to poor citizens.