New Delhi, Apr 1 (PTI) Senior Congress leader and former Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday presented a fact-sheet on the MGNREGA scheme alleging that two ministers in the Modi government "took the Lok Sabha for a ride".

"Two Ministers of the Modi government took the Lok Sabha for a ride yesterday on MGNREGA. Here are the facts they were running away from and are afraid of," he said on Twitter while sharing the fact-check on MGNREGA.

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He alleged that despite the increase in allocations for MGNREGA in absolute numbers since 2014, the BJP government has failed to meet the increasing demand owing to heightened rural distress under the Modi government.

"Instead of adequate budget allocation ahead of time, which the UPA did, the Modi government has repeatedly not met the demand for MGNREGA in a time of rural distress, leading to increasing pending liabilities and budgets running out during the financial year," he said.

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Ramesh claimed that in FY 2015-16, states had payments due amounting to Rs 765 crore. Pending liabilities increased from Rs 815 crore in FY 2016-17 to Rs 3,493 crore in FY 2020-21.

“In FY 2021-22, the pending liabilities at the end of the year was a whopping Rs 20,536.52 crore! Of this, Rs 5,194.52 crore are delayed or unpaid wages,” he said.

"Rather than increasing budget allocation for MGNREGA despite rising unemployment, in the latest budget only Rs 73,000 crore has been allocated. This is a 30.1 per cent reduction when compared to the allocation for FY 2021-22 and a 38 per cent reduction compared to that of FY 2020-21.

“Moreover, despite inflation the wages have not increased substantially under the Modi government," the former union minister said.

"MGNREGA workers are not being paid delay compensation for delays in wages owed to them,” he alleged.

“According to the Modi government's own data, only 0.92 per cent of delay compensation has been paid to workers, and Rs 27.84 crore in delay compensation remains unpaid. This is despite Supreme Court orders to the contrary," he said.

"To the Ministers who lied in Lok Sabha on 31.03.2022 during Zero Hour on MGNREGA: MGNREGA is a demand-driven programme and the UPA government made adequate allocations based on the projected demand. Regardless, it is false to say the allocated budget was not utilized during UPA government," the Congress leader said.

In FY 2013-14, he said, 98 per cent of the funds available (opening balances and releases) were spent.

"In the spirit of reform and transparency, the UPA government invited academics and researchers from all over the world and India to carry out independent evaluation of the world's largest public works programme, MGNREGA.

“This was released by the government as an anthology called ‘MGNREGA Sameeksha'. Has the Modi government ever opened up any government programme to independent evaluation without pre-conditions? What is the government afraid of?" Ramesh asked.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday had in Lok Sabha voiced concern over the budgetary cut for MGNREGA, contending that several states have negative balance in their accounts up to Rs 5,000 crore which has led to delays in payments to workers.

Rural Development Minister Giriraj Singh and I&B Minister Anurag Thakur hit back at Gandhi, accusing her of politicising the issue and claimed that her remarks were “far from truth”.

Singh claimed that the budgetary allocation for MGNREGA in 2013-14 (UPA years) was Rs 33,000 crore, whereas under Prime Minister Narendra Modi it had reached Rs 1.12 lakh crore.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)