‘Swaraj Abhiyan’ moves SC, seeks hearing on plea for allocation of funds for MGNREGA

'Swaraj Abhiyan’, a political party, on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court seeking an urgent hearing on its plea for a direction to the Centre to ensure that states have adequate funds to implement the rural employment guarantee scheme, MGNREGA.

A bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala took note the submissions of lawyer Prashant Bhushan, and said the plea may be mentioned for urgent hearing before the bench concerned.

“We will give you liberty to mention it before the bench headed by Justice Ajay Rastogi (before whom the matter was listed earlier),” the CJI said.

The political party, in its fresh plea, said, “There is currently a grave crisis being faced by crores of workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MGNREGA) in the country, with their pending wages piling up along with negative balances in most of the states.”

Read | Centre increases NREGA wages, Karnataka gets second lowest, Rajasthan highest

As of November 26, 2021, the state governments are facing a shortage of Rs 9,682 crores and the 100 per cent of the allocated funds for the year have been exhausted before the conclusion of the year, it said.

“This is despite this excuse of shortage of funds being a gross violation of the law,” it said and referred to the apex court judgement on MGNREGA wage payments.

The plea said directions to the Central Government be issued to put in place a mechanism to ensure that states have adequate funds to implement the programme for a subsequent month.

“The month when the demand was highest in the previous year should be used as the base month for which minimum funds must be provided to the State Government in advance,” the plea said.

It also sought issuance of direction to the Centre and states to comply with the instruction of May 31, 2013 issued by Ministry of Rural Development and ensure that workers are able to register their demand for work through technologies and get dated acknowledgement receipts for the same.

Read | Karnataka yet to recover Rs 127 crore under MGNREGA: Data

A direction be also issued to the Centre and states to comply with the provisions in the “Annual Master Circular” and ensure automatic payment of unemployment allowance to workers who have not been provided work within 15 days of them demanding it.

“A direction to the Central Government to ensure that all pending wage, material, and administrative payments pending as of today is cleared within the next 30 days,” it said.

It has also sought a direction to the authorities to ensure payment of compensation for the delay in payment of wages, as prescribed in the MGNREGA along with clearing all pending wage payments due.

Swaraj Abhiyan, then an NGO, had filed a PIL in the apex court in 2015 seeking various reliefs for rural poor and farmers and later came up with an interim application in that plea.