A matter of trust

The Chief Minister’s Relief Fund should be for those affected by disasters not for mango festivals

Whenever there are calamities, ordinary people are only too ready to contribute to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund (CMRF). The purpose of this fund is self-evident, or ought to be. It is to come to the assistance of anyone who has been subjected to some distress due to natural causes.

However, investigations by right to information activists reveal that several recipients of this fund in Maharashtra have not even remotely been stricken by disaster in any form. They include organisers of mango festivals, ghazal programmes, kabaddi and chess competitions and for making trips abroad. Shockingly, a Congress MLA received funds for a religious programme and so have actors’ fan clubs. Even the Mumbai and Delhi Press Clubs have been allotted funds, which is a blatant violation of the letter and spirit of the trust.

Many of the institutions which have benefited from this largesse are headed by former politicians and bureaucrats. For instance, the Shanmukhananda Hall in Matunga, which was razed by a fire in 1990 received Rs25 lakh from the fund seven years later. The Sabha which runs this hall is presided over by Dr V Subramaniam, a former minister in Maharashtra. It asked for Rs50 lakhs so that the reconstruction of the hall could be completed “as a remarkable centre of Culture and Entertainment” and
received half that amount despite official notings on the file that “funds in the CMRF are low”.

Similarly, Madhav Godbole, a respected former union home secretary asked for funds on behalf of the Centre for

Advanced Strategic Studies in Pune, which had already received Rs5 lakh in 1993. The file noted that funds could not be given as per the rules but deferred to the wishes of the Chief Minister. The Centre received another Rs2 lakh.

When Sushil Kumar Shinde was CM, he parted with Rs25 lakh to Raj Bhavan for the Governor’s staff sports and club facilities. This only goes to the show that there was collusion between the highest in the state’s hierarchy in dispensing these public funds — and that too, to a vestige of the Raj which is already under fire for occupying acres of space in some of the world’s most expensive real estate. 

Shailesh Gandhi, the indefatigable right to information activist, points out that the CMRF is a trust though it hardly functions like one. It was specifically set up “to assist people affected by natural calamities”. It is registered with the Charity Commissioner but in 2001, the state government passed a resolution exempting it from such tiresome procedures as holding meetings of trustees, keeping minutes of meetings and so on.  While some of the projects funded are irregular, others are actually illegal. The Income Tax department prohibits a trust from spending over a quarter of its funds in any year on projects not covered by its objectives. According to the Chief Minister’s office, 26 to 30 per cent of the fund has gone to individuals and institutions not affected by natural calamities or disasters.

It was only after protracted appeals by Gandhi that the chief minister finally opened the records to public scrutiny this February. He reveals that by the state government’s diktat — though this may well be by way of returning several favours received — sugar cooperatives were obliged to donate Rs2 to the CMRF for every tonne of cane that they crushed. This is reminiscent of the “commission” that former chief minister Abdul Rehman Antulay levied on cement, which in the early 1980s, was in extreme short supply. This was diverted to the Indira Gandhi Pratishtan, which led to the newspaper exposure titled, memorably, “Indira Gandhi as commerce” and culminated in Antulay’s resignation.

On an average, there are Rs200 crore in the CMRF every year. Auditors’ reports show that barely a quarter of the funds collected are disbursed. This is all the more disgraceful, considering Maharashtra is also the state which has seen most suicides by farmers every year — many of which are caused partly or wholly by drought. Legal activists have pointed out how funds were given for renovation of clubs and temples in a year when 9,000 children died of
malnutrition in the state.

It is time that the CMRF was subjected to much closer scrutiny and the funds allocated to genuine victims of calamities. One wonders that if this is the situation with various state relief funds, can the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund be much better?  In March 2007, the Central Information Commission ordered that its details had to be divulged. In 2004-5, Rs952 crore came into the fund but only Rs111 crores were spent although there was the tsunami that year.
The writer is author and activist