New Delhi, Sep 28 (IANS) The government Friday said that its flagship pro-poor programme to guarantee 100 days of work to each rural family in 330 selected districts now stands extended to the entire country.
The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and attended among others by Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, an aide in the Prime Minister’s Office said.
“The government has approved the extension of the scheme to now cover the entire country,” he said, and added the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) provided for extending the scheme to all the 600-odd districts in five years.
“The process has now been expedited,” he added.
The decision comes just two after Rahul Gandhi, the newly appointed general secretary of the Congress party, met Manmohan Singh along with a delegation and sought the scheme’s extension to the entire country.
The delegation said NREGA was a landmark legislation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, an important promise in the Congress manifesto and a key component of the National Common Minimum Programme.
The scheme is currently being implemented with central funds in 330 districts to guarantee 100 days of employment per annum on minimum wages to anyone registered under the act and who seeks work.
The rural development minister told the prime minister that he agreed with the observations of the Congress delegation, adding he saw the scheme as an effective means to prevent large-scale migration of rural workforce into cities.
It will also provide greater civic amenities in rural areas, the minister added.
Besides Gandhi, the Congress delegation included Ashok Gehlot, Janardan Dwivedi, Kishore C. Deo, Mukul Wasnik, Margaret Alva, Prithviraj Chavan and V. Narayanaswamy (all general secretaries), M. Veerappa Moily, Satyavrat Chaturvedi and V. Arun Kumar (senior Congress leaders).
The government had enacted the NREGA on Aug 25, 2005, and the scheme commenced Feb 2, 2006 in 200 districts. In the budget proposals for this fiscal year, Chidambaram added another 130 districts to the scheme, taking the total to 330.
According to the rural development ministry, 65 million people had registered under the scheme as on Friday and the government had provided work to 21.69 million for some 38.74 man-days.
Of them 9,900 families had completed the maximum 100 days of work.