NREGA extended to entire country

A meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today decided to extend the National Rural Employment Guarantees Act (NREGA) to all the districts in the country from April 1, 2008, days after new All-India Congress Committee (AICC) General Secretary Rahul Gandhi led a delegation to the PM with this demand.

The scheme is the centrepiece of the government's pro-poor appeal.

Minister for Rural Development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said that from April next year, 265 more districts would be covered by the livelihood guarantee programme.

"The plan to extend NREGA countrywide was in the works for some time. Gandhi's demand came as a major support for the plan," Singh added.

Snapping at reporters who repeatedly asked if it was Gandhi's intervention that led to the flash decision, Singh said: "Many MPs have also voiced the same demand. If it is Gandhi's request that has worked, it has ultimately only strengthened the programme."

The minister estimated that the NREGA would require around Rs 20,000 crore annually, to cover all 595 districts in the country which are classified as rural.

The allocation for the NREGA for 2006-07 was Rs 11,300 crore (200 districts), and Rs 12,000 crore for 2007-08 (330 districts). However, against this allocation, only Rs 8,800 crore was actually spent in 2006-07. This year, the expenditure is likely to touch Rs 10,000.

"The programme is an Act that has legal backing. So whatever money is required for the demand-driven NREGA will be provided by the government," Singh said.

Singh said the programme was not about hogging credit.

At present, the NREGA is operational in 330 districts of the country, with 200 districts covered in the first phase that was inaugurated in February 2006.

The scheme was extended to 130 more districts from April this year. It provided employment to 2.1 crore households in the first phase districts (2006-07) and created 90.5 crore mandays of which more than 60 per cent were SCs and STs and 40 per cent were women, officials said.

When asked why the government did not act on the recommendation for an extension, made by his ministry before the last budget, the minister said: "We were discussing the possibilities and were reviewing our experiences to roll it out on a larger scale.The states have to prepare themselves. They need time to set it up".