Maharashtra government yet to release MGNREGA share to 9,000 panchayats
It has emerged that the state government has failed to release funds towards wages for 9,022 of the 28,632 gram panchayats for the financial year 2015-16 under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The information was obtained from the MGNREGA website. The revelation came two days after the Supreme Court on Thursday rapped the Centre and state government for its “non-serious” approach towards tackling drought.
The MGNREGA is crucial as it aims to guarantee employment for people in villages during drought by providing employment for 150 days. Thus villagers are not forced to migrate from rural areas to urban and semi-urban areas in search of employment.
“Though Maharashtra is the first state to enact an employment guarantee act in the 1970s which was later adopted on national scale, data from the website of MGNREGA is very shocking. The state government has schemes for everything but it does not implement anything,” Swaraj Abhiyan leader Yogendra Yadav said.
The data reveals that of the 1,407 gram panchayats in Pune, a total of 954 did not spend a penny towards employment. In Beed district, 394 gram panchayats out of the total 1,182 did not spend anything. In Aurangabad district, 128 gram panchayats did not spend anything out of the total 871. In Dhule district, of the total 557 gram panchayats, 121 did not spend anything.
Incidentally, the Supreme Court and the Bombay high court in this week, heard cases related to the prevailing drought situation in several states and rapped both the state and Central government for not taking the issue seriously.
The Supreme Court was hearing the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Swaraj Abhiyan which said that nine states were facing serious drought situation such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
Mr Yadav in his letter to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had also suggested that Maharashtra must efficiently implement MGNREGA and proactively identify potential beneficiaries and issue job cards.
However, the Centre on Saturday released its share of Rs 12,230 crore to the state under MGNREGA two days after the Supreme Court pulled up both the Centre and state governments for not releasing funds.
