Difference between PMNRF and PM Cares

Amidst this crucial pandemic of Covid 19, many ways are been adopted by government and people to overcome the situation. When it comes to people, they are doing best of the best to keep themselves and their family stronger in terms of immunity. Many are doing yoga, exercise, many are taking immunity booster tablets and many more. Government also doing a lot to get over this. The facilities to hospitals, medical staffs, insurance, compensation, everything is there in the list.

In this very factual approach, government of India introduced a separate account called Prime Minister Cares fund to collect donations towards the pandemic. The money basically will be utilized in various stages of this entire process of overcoming the pandemic or disaster. In my knowledge there was already an account named Prime Minister National Relief Fund whose sole purpose was the same that PM Cares is of. Rather more than PM Cares. PMNRF gives assistance for medical treatment for the poor and needy, releases fund for natural calamities, disaster etc. Couple of days back I came across a post in Facebook in which Sambit Patra stating that PMNRF was totally controlled by INC and the auditing company named Thakur Vaidyanathan Iyer Company which was owned by Mr Rameshwar Thakur was a Congress Person. He was there till 2017-2018. Mr Patra also stated that the auditor should be changed every 3 years. He also gave some other statements which I think should not be taken into consideration.

Let us throw some light onto the discussion. After completely listening to Mr Patra, I cross checked both the PMNRF and PMC websites. And to my understanding, I got to see that PMNRF has a detailed audit reports where as PMC does not have any. Details below:-

PMNRF - https://pmnrf.gov.in/en/about
PMC - https://www.pmcares.gov.in/en/

In PMNRF I found detailed audit report until 2018-2019. Whereas in PMC I could not find any. Below is the screenshot of the auditing reports in PDF format. The highlighted area is of the ruling party. You can check those by visiting the website URL provided above.

Now there are certain questions that came to my mind.

1 – Both PMNRF and PMC are government portals and the ruling party controls the same. If any ruling party blames the opposition, then from 2014, the ruling party has also utilized the amount. If really the funds were under the control of the opposition, then how come the ruling party utilized those from 2014-2019?

2 – As per Mr Patra the auditor should be changed every 3 years. Then how come from 2014-2019, the same Thakur Vaidyanathan Iyer auditing company which was appointed by the opposition oversaw auditing? In these 5 years at least one time the auditing company should have been changed.

3 – Many people donated generously to the PM Cares fund. I as a citizen of India would like to see the cash inflow and outflow. And I am sure that every single citizen of my country would also be on the same page as I. Why is there no transparency in PM Cares fund?

My View – Blame game has been a very old tactic of Indian politics. But when any party is blaming the other, they should come up with real facts in front of the country. People today are very smart to understand the facts and figures. My sincere request to all the ruling party governments, please deliver exact facts and figures to the country.