3 months ago
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Contesting the directions from Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to the Lok Sabha Secretariat that nary questions connected PM CARES Fund should beryllium admitted, since the money is wholly made up of voluntary nationalist contributions and not immoderate authorities allocation, CPI(M)’s Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas said specified a stance is not legally sustainable.
The PMO, connected January 30, issued directions to the Lok Sabha Secretariat connected the issue. In this context, Mr. Brittas, successful a missive to Rajya Sabha Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan connected Tuesday (February 10, 2026), urged him to “summarily” cull specified directions, to support the law hierarchy betwixt Parliament and the Executive.
The missive warned that preventing MPs from raising questions connected funds that bask authoritative patronage, nationalist trust, and important contributions risks creating a “zone of opacity alien to Constitutional governance”.
Criticising the Centre’s bid to exclude the money from parliamentary scrutiny, Mr. Brittas argued that this presumption is internally inconsistent and contrary to the government’s ain records. He cited the Ministry of Corporate Affairs’s March 2020 bureau memorandum, which explicitly recognised PM CARES arsenic a Central Government-established money eligible for CSR contributions nether the Companies Act. He further noted that the Act was amended successful May 2020 to expressly see PM CARES successful Schedule VII – a statutory acknowledgement intolerable if the money were genuinely “outside authorities responsibility”.
Appeal to RS Chairman
In the powerfully worded letter, Mr. Brittas contended that the Centre cannot “on the 1 hand, amend a Central instrumentality to springiness PM CARES statutory recognition, and connected the other, assertion it is not a interest of the Government of India.” Attempts to classify the money arsenic beyond parliamentary scrutiny, helium wrote, is simply a “strike astatine the bosom of parliamentary democracy”.
He urged the Rajya Sabha Chairman to cull immoderate effort by the Union Government to artifact questions connected PM CARES and to uphold Parliament’s authorization to analyse each nationalist involvement entities linked to the Executive. “Parliamentary questions are the superior instrumentality done which the Legislature holds the Executive to account. To exclude from scrutiny a money that operates successful the nationalist realm – enjoys authoritative patronage, and commands nationalist spot connected the spot of its governmental relation – is to make a portion of opacity that is alien to law governance,” helium said.
