{"id":22431,"date":"2020-03-31T13:22:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T07:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/congress-questions-setting-up-of-pm-cares-fund-to-deal-with-coronavirus\/"},"modified":"2020-03-31T13:22:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T07:52:37","slug":"congress-questions-setting-up-of-pm-cares-fund-to-deal-with-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=22431","title":{"rendered":"Congress questions setting up of PM CARES Fund to deal with coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Why this new fund when the Prime Minister\u2019s National Relief Fund is already in existence: Party leaders<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/national\/congress-questions-setting-up-of-pm-cares-fund-to-deal-with-coronavirus\/article31210904.ece\">Special Correspondent<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Congress leaders on Monday questioned the setting up of PM CARES Fund to deal with the coronavirus pandemic by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the Prime Minister\u2019s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) is already in existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor on Twitter, commenting on another tweet about PM CARES, asked: \u201cWhy not simply rename PMNRF as PM-CARES, given the PM\u2019s penchant for catchy acronyms, instead of creating a separate Public Charitable Trust whose rules &amp; expenditure are totally opaque?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c@PMOIndia you owe the country an explanation for this highly unusual step,\u201d Mr. Tharoor added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On March 28, the government had set up the Prime Minister\u2019s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund\u2019 (PM CARES Fund) to deal with the unprecedented situation arising out of the COVID-19 outbreak where citizens can make voluntary contributions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, some critics including Congress leaders pointed out that money was lying \u2018unspent\u2019 in the PMNRF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe PM\u2019s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) has an unspent balance of \u20b93,800 crore [as of December 16, 2019]. Why couldn\u2019t #COVID19 donations go to PMNRF? Why was PM CARE created? Why are PM &amp; 3 ministers members of this trust without any opposition or civil society leaders?\u201dasked Congress spokesperson Salman Soz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe Prime Minister\u2019s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) was established in January 1948 after PM Jawaharlal Nehru made an appeal to assist displaced persons from Pakistan. PMNRF belongs to the people of India. Who does PM CARES Fund belong to?\u201d Mr. Soz added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Noted historian Ram Chandra Guha too targeted the government over PM CARES Fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis is a very important thread. Why a new fund when a Prime Minister\u2019s National Relief Fund already exists? And why the self-aggrandizing name, PM-CARES? Must a colossal national tragedy also be (mis)used to enhance the cult of personality?\u201d asked Mr. Guha.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why this new fund when the Prime Minister\u2019s National Relief Fund is already in existence: Party leaders Special Correspondent Congress leaders on Monday questioned the setting up of PM CARES Fund to deal with the coronavirus pandemic by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the Prime Minister\u2019s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) is already in existence. Lok [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}