The Tripura government has expressed its disappointment over reducing of funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme and has urged the union government to restore the funding.
The state’s Rural Development and Forest Minister Naresh Jamatia lamented, "The previous UPA government, during the last financial year, had allocated Rs.943.66 crore to implement the MGNREGA, but the present NDA government told us that it would give Rs.662 crore in the scheme for the current fiscal (2014-15)."
In a letter to the Union Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari, Jamatia has written against cutting the allocated funds under MGNREGA in the interest of the unemployed rural people in Tripura. "If the allocation under the MGNREGA is reduced, automatically number of person-days (working days) per jobless rural household would be decreased," his letter says.
The state maintained its top position for the fifth consecutive year by providing 87 person-days’ rural jobs per household during the 2013-14 fiscal under MGNREGA.
It mandates 100 days of employment in a financial year to, at least, one member of each rural household.
