NEW DELHI: The ‘Bharat Ke Veer’ platform that collects funds for families of central armed police force (CAPF) personnel who are killed in action, has received “unprecedented” contributions of about `45 crore post the February 14 Pulwama attack.
Donations received on the portal in last 10 days have surpassed the amount collected in the last two years, officials told this newspaper on Sunday.Officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which runs the portal, said the platform received “unprecedented” donations after the Pulwama attack, which claimed the lives of 40 Central Reserve Polcie Force (CRPF) personnel, and around 90,000 people have made contributions.
The bombing took place on the Jammu-Srinagar highway at Lethpora in Pulwama.“There has been an overwhelming response on the platform after the Pulwama attack. We have not seen such huge contributions being made in a short span of time in the nearly two year existence of this public fund. We are grateful to people for expressing solidarity with martyrs,” said CRPF DIG Vijay Kumar, who supervises the platform.
The fund-raising initiative was launched in April 2017 by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Till last month, around 37 crore was collected in the fund. Now, the total contributions have crossed `82 crore, a senior MHA official said. This month alone, around `45 crore have been contributed.
CAPFs comprise of Assam Rifles (AR), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), National Security Guard (NSG) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB).
How the platform works
A person can donate a maximum of D15 lakh to an individual trooper or his next of kin. Any excess amount is diverted towards the account of another trooper or the Bharat Ke Veer corpus