The Delhi High Court on Thursday stayed a Central Information Commission order directing the Income-Tax department to provide details about the exemption granted to the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations, or PM CARES Fund, reported Live Law.
The commission had asked for the details under the purview of the Right to Information Act. Through the Act, a citizen can request details from a a public authority.
Whether PM CARES Fund is a public authority or not is a sub-judice matter before a division bench of the High Court, said Judge Yashwant Varma while staying the order.
The PM CARES Fund was established in March 2020 as a “dedicated national fund” to deal with “any kind of emergency or distress situation” in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mumbai-based activist Girish Mittal had filed an application seeking information about the tax exemption granted to the PM-CARES Fund. Mittal had sought all documents submitted by the fund in its application for exemption and copies of file notings made while granting the approval.
The Central Public Information Officer and the first appellate authority under the Right to Information Act had rejected his application, after which he approached the Central Information Commission, according to Bar and Bench.
The Central Information Commission held that the dispute about PM-CARES’s public authority was being unnecessarily dragged into the matter, as Mittal had not filed the RTI application with the fund, but with a public authority. The commission directed the public information officer to provide details about documents submitted by the fund with its application for tax exemption.
The Income Tax Department’s public information officer then approached the Delhi High Court challenging the Central Information Commission’s order.
Government’s stand on PM-CARES
In December 2020, a controversy about the ownership of PM CARES had erupted after the fund’s trust deed was made public. A clause in the document called the fund a private entity, exempting it from RTI scrutiny.
The government had then said in response to an RTI query that PM CARES Fund was a body “owned and established” by the government. This contradicted the government’s earlier claim that the fund was private. The government had also said in its response that the fund does not come under RTI’s scrutiny as it receives funds from private sources.
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