In case, your philanthropic urge leads you to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund for making an online donation, you stand to be utterly disappointed. Click on the online payment button in the national funds section of the PM's website and you will get a message: “Invalid server certificate”.
No wonder then that with such a casual approach, the PM's NRF has witnessed a sharp decline in contributions over the years.
Normally for online payments, the website must be linked to banking transaction websites but the PM's website (pmindia.nic.in) leads you nowhere. The same is the case with the National Defence Fund.
As per the website: Resources of PMNRF are utilised to render immediate relief to citizens facing hardships, meeting expenses of poor patients. The corpus of the fund is invested with banks in fixed deposits and people can donate through designated banks or directly and such donations are having tax exemptions.
The National Defence Fund has been created for the welfare of soldiers and their families.
A recent response to an RTI query filed by activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal reveals a sharp decline in donations to the PM's relief fund for the past five years. The fund which received donations of more than Rs120 crore during the 2008-09 financial years has seen the funds inflow decreasing sharply since then.
The figures supplied by PMO's RTI section says in 2009-10, donations worth around Rs37.65 crore only were received. In the subsequent two financial years, the donation figures were pegged at Rs28.44 crore and Rs22.76 crore. According to unedited figures, in 2012-13 the donations received were only Rs17.86 crore.
For the past 10 years, only once did the PM's relief fund receive an impressive figure of Rs925 crore. This was in the financial year 2004-05 when Tsunami waves unleashed massive disaster in the Southern States. Widespread campaigns for donations led to individuals and corporates donating generously to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund. The very next year the Relief Fund received donations of more than Rs170 crore.
A similar kind of upsurge in donations happened during the Kargil War. In financial years 1999-2000 and 2000-01, the Relief Fund got donations of more than Rs124 crore and Rs402.68 crore respectively.