National Cultural Fund (NCF) has completed 52 projects with various donors since inception in 1996, Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy said in a written reply in Lok Sabha.

National Culture Fund 

• The National Culture Fund (NCF) was established as a funding mechanism distinct from the existing sources and patterns of funding for the arts and culture in India. 

• It provides a dependable and innovative platform for partnerships in the field of heritage, culture and the arts. 

• It will enable institutions and individuals to support arts and culture directly as partners with its government.

• The NCF was set up by the government of India as a trust under the Charitable Endowment Act, 1890 in November 1996. 

• NCF is managed by a council and an executive committee. 

• The Council is chaired by the Union Minister of Culture and has a strength of 21 including 15 non-official members representing various fields including corporate sector, private foundations and not-for-profit voluntary organisations.

• NCF constitutes an important departure from the implementation strategies of the government, which hitherto was thought to be solely responsible for providing administrative and financial wherewithal for culture related endeavours in the country. 

• It enables the government to mobilise extra budgetary resources by allowing direct contributions to the NCF account maintained outside the Consolidated Fund of India. 

• All contributions to NCF are given 100 per cent tax exemption under Section 80 G(2) of the Income Tax Act of 1961.

• The nature of funding has been made very flexible with the donor having an option to either execute the selected project directly wherein the donors can appoint and monitor the executive agencies to carry out the project work subject to the predefined technical/aesthetic conditions laid down by the ASI.

• The accounts of NCF are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India annually.

The major objectives of NCF are:

i) To administer and apply the Fund for conservation, maintenance, promotion, protection, preservation and up gradation of monuments protected or otherwise.

ii) Training and development of a cadre of specialists and cultural administrators, for innovations and experiments in arts and for documentation of cultural expressions and forms that have lost their relevance in contemporary scenario and are either fading out or facing extinction.

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