PMO intervenes in jobs Bill jam

There seems to be a long way to go before the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill can even be sent to the Cabinet for approval.

According to highly placed sources in the government , the draft of the Bill was to be taken up at the December 8 Cabinet meeting.

However, reservations about the Bill expressed by certain quarters, especially by members of the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory, Council delayed its presentation.

"The rural development ministry, which is responsible for presenting and implementing the Bill, has been asked by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) for another meeting on the present draft," said a government source.

The meeting is to be held before the next Cabinet meeting, slated for December 15, and will include the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, finance ministry officials and possibly Finance Minister P Chidambaram himself, Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, and PMO representatives.

"The last time such a meeting held was in October. But Ahluwalia, Chidambaram and Singh disagreed on going for a common minimum wage all over the country as well as the financial implications of the Bill," said a source.

Scarcely has that been iron-ed out that the Left parties started demanding a pre-introduction consultation on the Bill.

"We want that there be a pre-presentation consultation on the Bill, especially for the Left parties," said Gurudas Dasgupta of the CPI.

Earlier in the week, the CPI(M)'s Sitaram Yechury had said the Bill was a promise in the Congress manifesto before it became part of the common minimum programme of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

"Now, however, we all have an equal interest in making sure that a good legislation is drawn-up," Yechury said.

The Bill is being seen as the mother of all social legislations in the country and each of the UPA partners is seeking to take maximum mileage out of it.