A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad on Tuesday said it is an “important issue” and is “not so simple” while asking the Centre to file a detailed reply
The Delhi high court has expressed displeasure over the Centre’s one-page reply to a plea seeking to declare Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund a “State” under the Constitution to ensure transparency in its functioning.
A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad on Tuesday said it is an “important issue” and is “not so simple” while asking the Centre to file a detailed and exhaustive reply.
“You have filed a reply in the case. One page to such an important issue? It is only a one-page reply…Nothing beyond that? Such an important issue and one-page reply… Whatever the senior counsel [for petitioner] is arguing, there is not even a whisper about it in the reply,” the bench told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.
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In the reply filed last year, the Centre said that PM CARES Fund is a Trust and not of the government and its funds do not go into the Consolidated Fund of India. An official in the Prime Minister’s Office dealing with the PM Cares Fund on an honorary basis said the trust functions with transparency and a chartered accountant from a panel of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India audits its funds. Irrespective of the status of the PM CARES Fund under the Constitution and the Right to Information Act (RTI), it is not permissible to disclose third-party information, the official added.
Mehta told the court a detailed reply was filed in response to a similar petition Samyak Gangwal, the petitioner, has filed. He said another detailed reply would be filed within three weeks before the court posted the matter for hearing next on September 16.
Gangwal’s 2021 plea sought to declare PM CARES Fund a “State” under the Constitution Article 12 and to direct disclosure of its audit reports periodically. He filed another petition in 2020 seeking to declare PM CARES a “public authority” under the RTI Act.
Gangwal’s lawyer, Shyam Divan, on Tuesday said that the structure of the Fund is “very destructive of good governance”. “If these kinds of structures are allowed to stand and this kind of opacity is allowed to exist under the roof of our system, it may in the future result in huge problems.”
