Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke has questioned why the ₹8,452-crore corpus of the PM CARES Fund is not being used to improve basic facilities in rural government schools. His remarks came after the fund’s latest audited statements showed that its corpus rose 17.8% from ₹7,173.03 crore in 2023-24 to ₹8,452.07 crore in 2024-25.
Dipke said he had recently visited schools in villages and found several lacking basic facilities, including drinking water. He claimed authorities had cited a shortage of funds for the poor condition of some schools.
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Highlighting the size of the PM CARES corpus, Dipke said a well-equipped model school could cost around ₹8 crore. At that estimate, he said ₹8,500 crore could theoretically fund more than 1,000 high-tech model schools.
The increase in the fund’s corpus reportedly came despite domestic donations falling by nearly 30% and foreign contributions declining by more than 18% during 2024-25. The audited statements indicated that interest income from fixed deposits and refunds from implementing agencies contributed significantly to the increase, while expenditure during the year was negligible.
The PM CARES Fund was established in March 2020 to respond to emergency situations, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is its chairperson, while the defence, home and finance ministers serve as trustees.
Dipke and the CJP have called for the fund to be utilised for repairing and building schools, arguing that inadequate funding should not prevent children from accessing basic educational facilities.
