With reference to 'National Investment and Infrastructure Fund', which of the following statements is/are correct? 1. It is an organ of NITI Aayog. 2. It has a corpus of 4,00,000crore at present. Select the correct answer using the codes given below:

Both statements are wrong, so the answer is D. The National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) was announced in the Union Budget 2015-16 and set up in 2015 under the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance. It is a fund of funds that invests alongside private and foreign investors in infrastructure. It is not an organ of NITI Aayog, which is a policy think tank and has no investment arm.

On statement 2, the figure of 4,00,000 crore is off by a factor of ten. The fund's target corpus was about 40,000 crore, built up through government and institutional commitments. Check whether a later report gives a different current figure, because the fund's size has changed as more investors committed capital.

• Statement 1 is incorrect: NIIF is a government-sponsored investment vehicle, not a constituent body of the Aayog.
• Statement 2 is incorrect: The corpus is about 40,000 crore, not 4,00,000 crore.

Core concept: NIIF is a catalyst for infrastructure financing through public-private co-investment, which ties into the Economy and Infrastructure syllabus. For Mains, it links to debates on financing the infrastructure gap, PPP models, and the role of development finance institutions.

Trap: Candidates see NITI Aayog's name tied to 'infrastructure' and assume NIIF is its wing. The other trap is misreading the corpus figure, since 40,000 crore and 4,00,000 crore differ by a factor of ten.