Congress staged a demonstration here on Tuesday assailing the Centre for diluting benefits accruing to poor from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
During the demonstration organised by Erode District Congress Committee — Scheduled Caste Wing, the protesters said the MGNREGS was being ignored with an ulterior motive by the Central Government since it was a dream scheme of Congress president Sonia Gandhi that had earned kudos globally.
Earlier Congress regime devised the scheme to address hunger of poor and oppressed sections of the society, the protesters said, apprehending that the dilution of MGNREGS was a precursor to its abolition by the present BJP government.
At present, 625 districts in the country, and all the 31 districts in Tamil Nadu were deriving utility of the scheme.
The BJP Government at the Centre was attempting to scale down implementation of the scheme to only 200 districts in the country, and just 10 districts in Tamil Nadu.
The BJP Government stands exposed since it had spent only Rs. 12,000 crore so far out of the allotment of Rs. 33,000 crore in the 2014-15 budget, though expenditure of Rs. 17,000 crore was envisaged.
Inadequacies in implementation implies that the number of beneficiaries has come down, A. Sivakumar, president of the SC Wing of district Congress unit said.
So far, 27 per cent of the allotment was spent on materials / equipment and the rest for wage payment.
The new directive to utilise Rs. 51 per cent of the allotted sum for implements and equipment and the rest for wages would affect the poor and the needy, particularly Dalit women.
The Congress party, he said, apprehends that the ulterior motive of the Central Government was to push the poor landless farmers again into a situation of exploitation by rich land owners.
The Centre's reasoning that inadequacy of funds was the cause for scaling down implementation of MNREGS was not acceptable in the backdrop of the BJP Government finding common cause with large-scale industrialists to write off their debts to the tune of Rs. 6 lakh crore citing losses, the protesters said.
