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IITs, IIMs, Central Universities Made Hefty Donations To PM Cares Fund: Report

Writer: Navya Singh

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India, 22 Sep 2020 10:17 AM GMT

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For several educational institutions, the “voluntary contributions” were received from salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff, and in some instanced, even from pensioners and students.

After several public sector companies, a range of educational institutions from Navodaya schools for rural students to the prestigious IITs, IIMs and central universities, have contributed ₹21.81 crore in total to the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) fund, The Indian Express reported. The report also mentions that the contributions made to the fund were primarily from staff salaries.

The Prime Minister's Office had declined to provide details of contributions received, stating that PM CARES is "not a public authority under the ambit of the RTI Act".

The fund was set up to fight the coronavirus outbreak in the country and had a corpus of ₹3,076.62 crore on March 31, 2020, four days within creation of the fund, of which ₹3,075.85 crore were listed as "voluntary contributions", according to its official website.

On August 19, The Indian Express had reported that 38 PSUs, utilised their Corporate Social Responsibility funds to contribute over ₹2,105 crore. However, for several educational institutions, the "voluntary contributions" were received from salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff, and in some instanced, even from pensioners and students.

A whopping ₹7.48 crore was contributed by the Navoday Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS), with "donation from the employees" at its headquarters and all eight regional offices.

11 central universities together gave ₹3.39 crore, including Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) that contributed ₹1.33 crore followed by Banaras Hindu University (BHU) with over ₹1.14 crore and Central Sanskrit University (CSU) with ₹27.38 lakh. AMU said that the contributions were made from the salaries of its employees.

CSU's Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) RG Murli Krishnan revealed that ₹19.04 lakh was from "Sansthan contribution" and the rest was from "Adarsh contribution".

20 IITs contributed ₹5.47 crore. IIT-Kharagpur with over ₹1 crore, including ₹36.22 lakh from "other sources", ₹89,184 from "pensioners", and the rest from contributions made by teaching and non-teaching staff.

IIT-Kanpur's contribution was a whopping ₹47.71 lakh, of which ₹15 lakh came from pensioners, ₹36,800 from students and the remaining from staff. IIT-Roorkee contributed over ₹59.45 lakh, of which ₹4,226 came from the Sponsored Industrial and Research Consultancy (SRIC) office and the remaining from staff.

Kozhikode (₹33.53 lakh) topped the list of 10 IIMs that together gave more than ₹66 lakh. IIM-Ahmedabad contributed over ₹11.59 lakh, followed by IIM-Indore (₹6.91 lakh) and IIM-Kolkata (₹4.56 lakh). Apart from a contribution of ₹25 lakh from IIM-Kozhikode's "Corpus fund", the rest came from staff.

9 NITs together contributed ₹1.01 crore, with MANIT-Bhopal on top with ₹21.75 lakh, followed by NIT-Rourkela (₹19.36 lakh), NIT-Durgapur (₹13.72 lakh) and NIT-Calicut (₹12.94 lakh). Shockingly, all contributions came from employees.