Labour gain: Centre may allocate Rs 4,000 crore more to NREG scheme

New Delhi: The government is likely to set aside another Rs 4,000 crore for the flagship jobs scheme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in the second supplementary budget, increasing the total allocation to more than Rs 47,000 crore for the current financial year.

This will be the highest allocation for the scheme that provides up to 100 days of manual work for any rural household seeking work. This can be increased to 150 days if required.

The rural development ministry had asked for an additional disbursal of Rs 10,000 crore to meet wage payment requirement for November 2016-March 2017.

The second supplementary budget is expected to be presented in Parliament on Tuesday. The government had allocatedRs 38,500 crore to the scheme in this year’s budget and then givenRs 5,000 crore in the first supplementary budget.

While the additional allocation was considered sufficient for the monsoon months, the ministry has witnessed a spike in demand for work under the scheme since November.

"We want to start the new fiscal without any backlog of payments… Though the allocation is less than we had requested we are hoping to manage with the available resources," said a senior official, who did not wish to be identified.

The Supreme Court had come down heavily on the Centre for not providing timely payments to workers under the scheme when the country was hit by two successive years of drought.


The apex court had said the Centre cannot pass the responsi-bility to states for vast areas of the country reeling under severe water shortage after two years of poor rains.

Following this, the Centre released aboutRs 12,000 crore out of this year’s allocation towards pending wage liabilities to states.

Till November, over 151 crore person days were generated under the scheme but only 47 per cent of payments have been made within the stipulated 15 days.

The ministry has set a target of achieving 75 per cent timely payments by March 2017 under the scheme which has faced severe criticism over delayed payments.

The government has asked the ministry to upscale National Electronic Fund Management System direct fund transfers to beneficiaries’ accounts to more states.

The government has started geo-tagging of assets created under the programme in association with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to establish accountability and transparency in the scheme.