State opposes Centre’s plan to grant 20 cr as NREGA labour budget

JAIPUR: Rajasthan government has opposed the Centre’s proposal to allocate reduced NREGA labour budget of 20 crore for the financial year 2023-24. The state government has demanded a minimum labour budget of 37 crore for the financial year 2023-24, said state’s rural development department secretary Manju Rajpal.

Rajasthan has so far generated 34.87 crore persondays under MGNREGA even as the Centre had revised the labour budget up to 34 crore for the financial year 2022-23. The Centre had initially approved a labour budget of 24 crore for 2022-23.

“The ministry of rural development has approved only 20 crore labour budget for 2023-24. We have opposed it during the empowered committee's meeting of the government of India. We’ve put our foot down and have told them that 20 crore was not sufficient for us and that the Centre was passing the labour budget only for 6 months,” said Rajpal. “The chief minister (Ashok Gehlot) and the rural development and panchayati raj minister (Ramesh Chand Meena) have also written to the Centre in this regard.”

In the last couple of years, the state has generated persondays above 40 crore (Covid years). Even in years before Covid, we have generated persondays above 30 crore,” she added.

Rajpal further explained that less amount of labour budget approval by the ministry leads to the districts, blocks and panchayats preparing themselves proportionately for the whole financial year (instead of the labour budget that is expected to be revised later in the year). “It creates an impression that we have this window (20 crore) to play around when we have a potential of 40 crore. We’ve raised this issue with the Centre.”

“Even though NREGA is a demand-driven scheme and we can get the labour budget revised later, it takes a lot of effort to convince the field officials to prepare themselves for a labour budget of say 35 crore,” said Rajpal.