The Central allocation to the Union Territory Disaster Response Fund has remained a meagre ₹5 crore for the fiscal amid a raging COVID-19 pandemic, response to a Right to Information (RTI) application has revealed.
In response to the RTI plea filed by citizen-activist Sudarsanan, the Ministry of Home Affairs said that ₹5 crore was released for 2020-21 in April.
The allocation, which was inadequate given the rise in magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, was half of ₹10 crore sanctioned in 2016-17 and 2017-18. In fact, for the past three successive years, the Centre’s grant to the disaster relief fund had been a standard ₹5 crore.
The response stated that ₹424.50 crore had been released in April under MHA grant transfers for the first quarter of 2020-21 out of the ₹1,703.02 crore provisioned as per the Budget Estimate for the fiscal.
This amount comprised ₹1,698 crore as grants to meet gap in resources and financing the schemes of Government of Puducherry and token provisions for externally aided projects such as the Coastal Disaster Risk Reduction Project and a water supply project.
“Central allocation is an untied fund and it can be used for any purpose, including COVID-19 management, as the U.T. government may want,” a senior government official said. There is 25% cap on spending from the corpus of ₹10 crore maintained under the Disaster Management Fund.
Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy said that the actual fund component of the Central aid for disaster relief amounted to ₹3.7 crore with the rest taking the form of PPEs, testing kits and ventilators. “We have channelled public donations into the Chief Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund to the tune of ₹9 crore towards strengthening infrastructure to combat the COVID crisis,” Mr. Narayanasamy said.
The government in March sought ₹225 crore as interim aid to deal with the pandemic. In April, a pandemic response proposal seeking about ₹995 crore was forwarded to the Centre.
“We have not received so much as an acknowledgement that the proposals are under consideration of the Centre. We are pretty much left to fend for ourselves in fighting through this crisis so far,” Mr. Narayanasamy added.