PM heeds Rahul's call

Fixes meeting for today after Gandhi says job scheme should be for all.

A day after newly-appointed Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi led a delegation to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and suggested that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) be extended to all 583 districts of the country, the Prime Minister has scheduled a meeting on Friday to examine how this can be done.

According to a source in the government, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh will attend the meeting.

"The budget allocation for the present programme, which covers 330 districts in the country, is around Rs 12,000 crore. The additional expenditure to extend the programme to all 583 districts of the country, that is, 253 more districts, will be another Rs 6,000 crore," said the source.

He said an extension of the programme was on the cards because social sector schemes were the current priority of the government. "Take the old age pension scheme. It was announced by the Prime Minister on August 15. The

Cabinet note was ready on August 16 and a scheme called the Indira Gandhi National Pension Scheme was cleared by the Cabinet in less than a month," the source added.

While the government is trying to play down the role of Rahul Gandhi in the extension of the scheme, the prompt action taken by the Prime Minister's office is politically significant.

"There are several reasons why the extension of this programme to all districts is a good idea. The main reason is the government wants to claim ownership of the scheme in the event of a mid-term poll," said the source.

An official in the rural development ministry said that plans to offer more than 100 days of guaranteed employment under the scheme were not likely to be considered.

"Apart from Rajasthan, most states have shown an average demand of only around 55 days," the source added.