MGNREGA

The government on Tuesday warned of strict action if MNREGA funds were misused or the guidelines for the implementation of the scheme were not followed. The remarks came after Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal alleged in the Lok Sabha that MNREGA funds were being misused in several states, including Punjab. "Rather than being routed through panchayats, the funds are being diverted by the state governments and are being misused," she alleged. Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said strict action will be taken in such cases. "Wherever guidelines are not being followed, funds are found to be misused, and rules violated, I assure (you) that we will send teams to investigate, and strict action will be taken," he said. During the Question Hour, Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee engaged in a war of words with the treasury bench members in the Lok Sabha over the "stoppage" of MNREGA funds for West Bengal. Banerjee alleged that the benefits of the MNREGA

Meanwhile, available funds for the scheme seems to be falling short of the expenditure and as on March 3, a negative net balance of Rs 18,681.24 crore is reflected in the books

Accusing the Modi government of perpetuating a policy of indifference to the plight of MGNREGA workers, the Congress on Monday demanded that the Union Budget must increase MGNREGA wages and the Aadhar Based Payment Bridge Systems not be made mandatory. The opposition party demanded that MGNREGA wages be increased with the goal of hitting Rs 400 per day as a national minimum wage. In a statement, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said MGNREGA wages cannot be set by the arbitrary whims of the government. He said a Standing Committee must be established to evaluate the need for changes in the wage rate. The Aadhar Based Payment Bridge Systems (ABPS) must not be made mandatory, Ramesh said. He also put forward the demand that the number of workdays under MGNREGA must be increased from 100 to 150 days. "One of the earliest indications of Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's uncaring attitude and shortsightedness was his mockery of MGNREGA on the floor of ..

Uttar Pradesh ranks first in providing 100 days of employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Keshav Prasad Maurya said on Monday. Maurya, who heads the Rural Development and Integrated Rural Development Department, said in a post on X, "Under the MGNREGA scheme, as of 2024-25, 3,13,076 families in Uttar Pradesh have been provided with 100 days of employment." "Uttar Pradesh ranks first in providing 100 days of employment under this scheme. This ensures that unskilled labourers in rural areas do not have to leave their villages in search of work," he said. The Rural Development Department is also providing training to unskilled workers. "To ensure that MGNREGA workers do not remain labourers, they are being trained under Mission Unnati led and directed by Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. This is aimed at making them skilled and capable in their field," an official of the department ...

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Data sourced from the MGNREGA website showed that 21.58 million households sought work under the scheme in December

More than 35 lakh MGNREGS job cards were deleted in the current fiscal while over 38 lakh were issued, the government informed the Rajya Sabha on Friday. Job cards cannot be deleted due to non-linkage with Aadhaar, Union Minister of State for Rural Development Kamlesh Paswan further said in his written response. "Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (Mahatma Gandhi NREGS), Aadhar Payment Bridge System is only a mode of payment and job cards cannot be deleted due to reason of non-linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts," he added. Paswan said updation and deletion of job cards was a regular exercise undertaken by states and Union territories. "In the current financial year 2024-25 (as on 16.12.2024), a total number of 35.57 lakh job cards have been deleted," he said. The cards were deleted due to being fake or incorrect, duplicate, households not willing to work, family permanently shifting from gram panchayat and "single person in job card and that per

Flagging low wages under MGNREGS, a Parliamentary panel has questioned why the remuneration under the flagship scheme was not linked to an inflation index. It has also urged the Union rural development ministry for devising a mechanism for raising wages under the scheme. Headed by Congress MP Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, in a report tabled in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, rapped the ministry and said there had been no noticeable change in its stance. It has been sending "stereotype responses" regarding revision of wages, the report said. "Rising inflation and cost of living, be it urban or rural setting, has risen manifold and is evident to all. Even at this moment, going by the notified wage rates of MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), per day wage rate of around Rs 200 in many states defies any logic when the same state has much higher labour rates," the panel said in its report.

Civil society says claims of timely release, funds increase misleading; threaten protest from December 6

According to some experts, the increase in demand may be attributed to workers returning to worksites after completing sowing activities on farms

Under the scheme, one adult member from families who have completed at least 100 days of employment under the NREGA programme would be trained

The analysis showed that while 8.5 million workers were deleted, only 4.5 million workers were added to the list of registered MGNREGA workers, thus taking the net deletion to 3.9 million

Move aims at tracking workforce formalisation in India

Civil society activists and people working on the ground, however, believe that the decline in work demand is artificially created due to fund shortages for the programme

The work completed by July in the 2024-25 fiscal year is 230 million person-days fewer than in the same period last year under MGNREGS, signalling some improvement in traditional centres of employment

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday slammed the Centre over its handling of the MGNREGA, alleging that the present state of the scheme is "a living monument of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "betrayal" of rural India. Kharge recalled that in 2005, on this day, the then Congress-led UPA government enacted the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to ensure 'Right to Work' to crores of people in rural India. In a post on X, he said at present, there are 13.3 crore active workers who depend on the MGNREGA, despite low wages, abysmal work-days, and facing deletion of job cards. In the guise of using technology and Aadhaar, the Modi government has deleted over seven crore workers' job cards, cutting these households off from MGNREGA work, the Congress president claimed. This year's Budget allocation for the MGNREGA is just 1.78 per cent of the total budgetary allocation, which marks a 10-year low in the scheme's funding, he said. The lower allocat

Data does not show that states with more poverty and higher unemployment rates use more of the scheme's funds, it says

The government will have to tweak the demand for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and may retain the demand for PM Kisan to not allow fiscal slippage

Bumper RBI dividend may help govt increase funding

In April 2024, around 21.51 million households sought work under the scheme, which was 10.59 per cent lower than the number of households who sought work under the scheme in April 2023