Cabinet note likely on Aatmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana in next 15 days

New Delhi: Looking to swiftly roll out the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana that’s aimed at creating jobs, the labour ministry will soon move a note to secure the cabinet’s approval, a top government official told ET.

“The cabinet note will be moved in the next 15 days,” the official said, adding that work had begun on framing the rules for the scheme that will be issued soon after.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced the Aatmanirbhar Package 3.0 containing a dozen measures to lift the economy hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, including the scheme to generate employment.


Under Aatmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana available to all entities registered with the Employees Provident Fund Organisation, the government will provide the provident fund contributions of both the employees and employers for two years for any new hires drawing salaries of up to Rs 15,000 per month.

For an establishment with 50 employees, a precondition for the benefit is adding a minimum of two jobs and for those with more than 50 employees, a minimum of five jobs need to be added. Calculation of employee strength will be based on data as of September 2020. The scheme is applicable until June 30, 2021.

The rules being framed will deal with issues such as how the benefit will accrue if an employee leaves in the middle of the two-year period, the official added.

The scheme will cost the government Rs 6,000 crore this year, but the total expenditure is expected to be about Rs 25,000 crore, the official added.

“As per EPFO data, if we purely go by current trends, we believe that almost 15-20 lakh employees will get benefited from this scheme by March 2021,” SBI Research said in a note.

The nationwide lockdown imposed to contain the Covid-19 spread and the subsequent economic slowdown led to large job cuts across sectors. The latest scheme is expected to aid hiring by companies and address the situation.