In the Year Of The Lowest MGNREGS Allocation, 93% Budget Used in Just Six Months
The Wire Staff
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New Delhi: Nearly 93% of the Rs 60,000 crore budget allocated to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for this financial year has been used in just the first half of year, the Economic Times reported.
The demand for work under the rural employment scheme also increased compared to the same period last year, raising questions about the depth of an industrial recovery, the report said.
As a result, the rural development ministry will seek "substantial" supplementary funds to run the scheme throughout this fiscal year. The fund requirement is high despite the suspension of MGNREGS work in West Bengal which is one of the main beneficiaries of the scheme.
In a statement released on Thursday (October 5), the Union rural development ministry said, “Funds of State of West Bengal have been stopped from March 9, 2022 as per provision of Section 27 of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 due to non-compliance of directives of Central Government,” adding that there were no fund constraints for the scheme.
Preliminary data compiled by the rural development ministry also suggests that person-days under the scheme – the total number of work days by a person registered under the scheme in a financial year – has already hit 82% of the full-year target so far.
Person-days generated under the scheme rose close to 9% between April and September from a year earlier to almost 187 crore, the report said.
The number of individuals who opted for work under the scheme until September also increased by 4.6% to about 19 crore in 2023 compared to the year before. Additionally, members of 15 crore households demanded work in the first quarter, up 8.5% from a year before, the Economic Times report said.
It may be noted that the budgetary allocation to MGNREGS has come under the scanner as this year’s allocation was 32% less than the current financial year's revised estimate of Rs 89,400 crore and just a little more than half of the budget estimate of Rs 1,11,500 crores of 2020-21, Deccan Herald had reported.
In other words, this year’s allocation, under 0.2% of the GDP, is the lowest MGNREGS allocation ever.
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