Jharkhand CM also opposes changes to MNREGA

Hemant Soren's letter to the PM in this regard comes a week after his Tripura counterpart held a rally in New Delhi against funds cuts in the scheme.

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an appeal “to ensure that the provisions of MNREGA are not diluted in any manner.”

Mr. Soren's letter to the PM comes a week after Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar held a rally in New Delhi on November 26 against the Central Government's funds cuts in the rural employment guarantee programme.

In his letter, Mr. Soren opposed the proposals announced by Nitin Gadkari in August, during his tenure as Union Minister for Rural Development, that the National Democratic Alliance Government may restrict the scheme's implementation to 2500 blocks all over the country instead of it being universal.

In a second proposal, Mr. Gadkari had said that the government may change the permissible labour to material ratio of expenses from the current 60:40 to 51:49 to build more concrete assets.

Mr. Soren noted in his letter that he considered it unfair to deprive poor households in some select districts of working in MNREGA if they happened to live in a relatively well-off district. 

He cited that in Jharkhand, 70 percent of funds had been spent on wages adding that the State had built

“productive assets” under the existing labour and material expenses ratio.

“The programme generated 4.4 crore person days of employment in Jharkhand in 2013-14 providing much-needed relief to 17 lakh MNREGA workers and their families.

Further, MNREGA led to the creation of numerous productive assets in Jharkhand, including close to 100,000 wells that enable small and marginal farmers to grow higher-value crops,” Mr. Soren notes in his letter on December 2.

Mr. Soren, whose Jharkhand Mukti Morcha which is in power in Jharkhand in alliance with the Congress and the Rashtriya Janta Dal, said the State government was facing challenges in implementing the

programme and appealed to Mr. Modi for “guaranteed central funding on demand, without any caps or restrictions as mandated in the Act, and timely flow of funds at all levels so wages could be paid on time.”

The newly-appointed Minister for Rural Development Chaudhary Birendra Singh had on November 11 said the NDA Government was no longer considering these changes announced by Mr. Gadkari.