7 months ago
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The authorities is apt to present a Bill successful the ongoing Winter league of Parliament amending the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), changing the sanction of the flagship agrarian employment strategy to “Pujya Bapu Gramin Rozgar Yojana”.
According to elder authorities functionaries, the amended Bill was cleared by the Union Cabinet successful its gathering held connected Friday (December 12, 2025). There was nary authoritative announcement connected the connection astatine the furniture briefing addressed by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. The archetypal Bill passed by Parliament connected August 25, 2005 was called “National Rural Employment Guarantee Act”. The suffix “Mahatma Gandhi” was added successful 2009.
The flagship agrarian employment strategy guarantees up to 100 days of wage employment successful each fiscal twelvemonth to each household whose big members unpaid to bash unskilled manual work. The sources besides indicated that the authorities plans to summation this to 125 days.
As per a written reply by the Minister of State for Rural Development Kamlesh Paswan connected Friday successful Rajya Sabha, the mean fig of days of employment per household during the past 5 years comes to 50.35 days. Mr. Paswan besides noted that the strategy is simply a “fallback enactment erstwhile nary amended employment accidental is available”.
In 2022, the authorities had appointed a sheet headed by erstwhile Union Rural Development Secretary Amarjeet Sinha to reappraisal the scheme, particularly the inter-State variations, peculiarly little expenditure nether the strategy successful States with higher poorness rates, including Bihar, erstwhile compared with economically better-off States, including Tamil Nadu.
The amended Bill is besides apt to instrumentality into relationship the panel’s recommendation, introducing exclusionary clauses based connected economical indices of a State.
The authorities is besides apt to tweak the backing pattern. At present, the Centre bears 100% of the scheme’s wage component.
The authorities could besides present much checks to debar situations specified arsenic prolonged standoff betwixt the Centre and West Bengal government. The merchandise of funds to West Bengal was stopped successful March 2022 by the Centre owing to continued non-compliance with the directives of the Union authorities by the State. The Centre connected December 6 issued orders for resumption of the strategy successful the State pursuing a Calcutta High Court bid “subject to mandatory compliance with the peculiar conditions”.
