After having not received money from the Centre for the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) for three consecutive financial years, the West Bengal government is now apprehensive that they would not be allocated the MGNREGA funds for the next financial year also, as officials alleged that the executive committee of the Centre’s scheme did not ask West Bengal to submit demands for either the job guarantee scheme or the PMAY (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna).
A senior official of the state government said, “Generally, the executive committees of different Central schemes ask state governments to submit their detailed demands for the next financial year within December and after that, they consult with state government representatives and finalise allocations for the next financial year. The executive committee of PMAY and MGNREGA called every state and had a meeting with their representatives but West Bengal didn’t get a call.”
He further said, “We have already prepared a detailed report and the state government has already started disbursing money from their own for these two schemes. But the Central government is not ready to hear our demands. So, we are apprehensive that for the financial year 2025-26 as well, the Centre will not give money for the MGNREGA and PMAY.”
State Panchayat and Rural Development Department sources alleged that the Central government stopped fund allocation MGNREGA and PMAY from December 2021 after the Centre accused the state of “corrupt” practices in utilising the schemes.
A senior official of Panchayat and Rural Development said, “We have dues in MGNREGA of Rs 7,000 crore in the financial year of 2021-22. After that, as the Central government stopped allocating funds in 100 days’ work, we lost funds of Rs 10,000 crore funds per year. So, that is a total of Rs 30,000 crore.”
State Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya alleged, “We have already submitted in the pre-budget meeting of the Central Government the dues of Rs 1,71,000 crore and urged us to settle. We said that the Centre sent 27 teams and 49 financial teams (to investigate the allegations) and they didn’t find anything. Even after that, why did the Central government stop allocating funds to our state?”
State Panchayat and Rural Development minister Pradip Majumder said, “We are being subjected to illegal and unreasonable deprivation, despite having a series of national teams come here to try and find faults. We also submitted reports on the action taken. Our Chief Minister, more than once, appealed to the Centre to settle the dues. After that, we on our own sanctioned money to build houses for more than 10 lakh poor families under the ‘Banglar Bari’ scheme. This is how we are facing the challenges.”
However, BJP MLA Agnimitra Paul asked why the Centre should “make an exception for West Bengal”.
“The Central Government asked the West Bengal government about corrupt practices in these schemes and said to take action against those who are culprits. But the West Bengal government didn’t do that. Naturally, the question was raised — who is the West Bengal government trying to guard? Even after taking proper action, the Centre will not allocate money. We are ready to go to Delhi to demand (funds) for the state but we can’t make an illegal demand to the Central government,” she said.