Secrets of the Prime Minister's Relief Fund

I had sought information about the PM's relief fund in June 2006 using RTI. The PMO refused to give any information about the functioning of the fund, claiming it was not a Public authority! The first appellate authority rejected my appeal. Ultimately, the information was released, on orders by the Central Information Commission. In the end of March 2007, I raised questions about the fact that in 2004-05 while 968.78 crores came into the fund for the Tsunami disaster, only 101.6 crores were spent. Even in the next year only 109.21 crores were spent. The money had been donated for the people affected by a calamity, and aid had not reached the affected sufferers. In response to this the PMO put up the following ingenious explanation on its website http://pmindia.nic.in/relief .htm. :
“Statement of Income and Expenditure for last five years is as under:

Year	Total Income	Total Expenditure	Balance
2002-03	102.65	142.24	482.88
2003-04	50.48	88.45	444.91
2004-05	968.78	101.60	1312.08
2005-06	278.06	109.21	1480.94
2006-07	144.32	181.89	1443.37

An amount of Rs. 895.42 crore has been earmaked for Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation Schemes.
I was intrigued by this, since it meant that there was more than enough money for the victims of Tsunami and there was no immediate need. Relief funds are collected to give immediate relief to victims of calamities, and Citizens and others are moved by the suffering and give the money for this specific purpose.
To verify the accuracy of this curious claim, I again sent a RTI application to the PIO of the PMO asking : "If there is a system of allocating funds for future disbursals in each year, I want the details of the allocations made for future disbursals in 2003-2004, 2004-2005 and 2005-2006
I also asked for a copy of the minutes of the meeting in which this was decided, or any documentary evidence in that year, evidencing it.
The answer revealed that the claim on the PMO’s website was untrue. It stated, "I am to refer to your application dated 8 April 2007 under RTI on the above noted subject and to say that there is no system of prior fund allocation. Sanctions/releases are made only after the events". The relief funds are run as personal fiefdoms as my RTI queries have shown.
On 4th December, 2007 I asked the PIO of the PMO, “ As of 31st March, 2007 I want the details of the amounts deposited in banks or any other place, giving the names of the banks or Financial Institutions, amounts deposited and rates of interest.
The Public Information Officer has refused to give this information, on the bizarre grounds,““specific information regarding the FIs and the terms and conditions of the deposits may amount to disclosure of information including commercial information, trade secrets or intellectual property, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of third parties. Further, this information is made available to the officers of the Fund in their fiduciary relationship. The desired information is therefore covered under section 8 (1) (d) & (e) of the Right to Information Act 2005.”
The first appeal has been rejected and the matter is now before the Central Information Commission in a second appeal. It appears that there are some dark secrets which the PMO is trying to hide. Right to Information will pry and bring these into Public domain.