The Ministry of Rural Growth (MoRD) has sought an outlay of Rs 5.23 lakh crore for Mahatma Gandhi Nationwide Rural Employment Assure Scheme (MGNREGS) for 5 years till 2029-30 in its Might 15 proposal to the Expenditure Finance Committee, The Indian Categorical has learnt. EFC is a panel underneath the Finance Ministry that appraises all authorities schemes and tasks.
The outlay for 5 years until 2029-30 is about 12 per cent larger than the Central launch of Rs 4.68 lakh crore for MGNREGS through the earlier 5 monetary years, 2020-21 to 2024-25. The discharge had peaked at Rs 1,09,810 crore in 2020-21, the primary full yr after Covid outbreak. Throughout this yr, there was a spike in demand for work when a report 7.55 crore rural households availed the scheme, which turned a security internet for migrants who returned to their villages after a nationwide lockdown was imposed.
The Central launch progressively declined to Rs 85,680 crore in 2024-25, the bottom within the final 5 years. The variety of households working underneath the scheme regularly dropped over time — 7.25 crore in 2021-22; 6.18 crore in 2022-23; 5.99 crore in 2023-24; and 5.79 crore in 2024-25. In 2024-25, the full Central launch was Rs 85,680 crore.
The final three monetary years (2022-23 to 2024-25) don’t embody MGNREGS beneficiaries’ figures for West Bengal, the place the scheme has been suspended since March 2022.
Sources within the authorities mentioned the EFC appraisal and approval is a part of the Centre’s train to judge and approve its schemes for the following Finance Fee cycle. The MGNREGS is backed by legislation and subsequently the EFC approval is only a formality. The outlay proposed by the MoRD is simply “estimated” and is “topic to alter” because the MGNREGS is a demand-driven scheme, they mentioned.
The scheme is notified by totally different states and UTs underneath Part 4 of the MGNREG Act 2005, which says that “each State Authorities shall, inside six months from the date of graduation of this Act, by notification, make a Scheme, for offering not lower than 100 days of assured employment in a monetary yr to each family within the rural areas lined underneath the Scheme and whose grownup members, by software, volunteer to do unskilled guide work topic to the situations laid down by or underneath this Act and within the Scheme…”
Part 22 of the Act offers for funding patterns of the scheme. In response to the Act, the Central authorities is chargeable for paying 100 per cent price of three elements — wages, administrative bills and Social Audit Models (SAUs) — and as much as three-fourths of the fabric price of the scheme, together with fee of wages to expert and semi-skilled employees, topic to provisions of Schedule II of the Act. The state governments are chargeable for assembly the prices of the next: (a) price of unemployment allowance payable underneath the scheme; (b) one-fourth of the fabric price of the scheme, together with fee of wages to expert and semi-skilled employees, topic to provisions of Schedule II; (c) administrative bills of the State Council.
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“No change is proposed within the present funding sample throughout all elements,” a supply advised The Indian Categorical.
The MGNREGS was launched in 200 most backward rural districts of the nation in 2006-07 and was prolonged to a further 130 districts throughout 2007-08; and to all the nation from monetary yr 2008-09.
The MoRD has circulated the EFC observe at a time when the federal government has set in movement the method of prioritising its schemes for the sixteenth finance cycle beginning April 1 subsequent yr. The Ministry of Finance has advised all ministries and departments that no Centrally Sponsored Scheme or Central Sector Scheme might be thought of for continuation past March 31, 2026, except a third-party analysis of the scheme is carried out.
In response to the Finance Ministry, there are 54 Centrally Sponsored Schemes and 260 Central Sector Schemes, which have their terminal date of approval till March 31, 2026 and are prone to be submitted for re-appraisal.
