PM Cares Children Scheme beneficiaries come down from 3694 to 12 in four years
Under the PM CARES for Children Scheme, a pro-rata amount is credited in the post office account of each identified child in such a manner that the corpus for each child becomes Rs 10 lakh at the time of attaining 18 years of age
Chennai: The PM CARES Fund with a closing balance of Rs 6283 crore as per the data updated by the government till FY23, disbursed Rs 439 crore in the year, of which a major chunk of Rs 346 crore was moved into PM CARES for Children scheme. However, the number of beneficiaries under the children scheme has come down from 3694 in FY21 to 12 in FY24.
Under the PM CARES for Children Scheme, a pro-rata amount is credited in the post office account of each identified child in such a manner that the corpus for each child becomes Rs 10 lakh at the time of attaining 18 years of age.
Children are entitled to receive a monthly stipend between the age of 18 and 23 years, by investing the corpus of Rs10 lakhs into Monthly Income Scheme of Post Office. They are entitled to receive the amount of Rs 10 lakh on attaining the age of 23 years. The government has disbursed Rs 358.11 crore to the individual post office account of each beneficiary child till date, the government informed Rajya Sabha.
However, the beneficiaries under the PM CARES for Children Scheme have been coming down steadily in the past four years. In 2021, there were 3694 beneficiaries under the scheme. This fell to 651 in 2022 and further to 186 in 2023. In 2024 there were only 12 beneficiaries under the scheme. In 2024, Gujarat had four beneficiaries, Madhya Pradesh two and states like Manipur, Meghalaya and Maharashtra had one each.
The scheme received Rs 346 crore in FY23 from the PM CARES fund, which had disbursed a total of Rs 439 crore in the year. The four-year old ‘Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund)’ constituted in 2020 receives donations from within the country and outside to deal with any kind of emergency or distress situation.
As per the updated data, the fund had an opening balance of Rs 5415 crore in FY23 and it received Rs 912 crore during the year – Rs 909 crore from voluntary domestic donations and Rs 2.57 crore from foreign contributions. The total receipts along with the opening balance stood at Rs 6723 crore at the end of the fiscal and the closing balance at the end of the fiscal was Rs 6283 crore.