AGARTALA, July 31 (TIWN): Rural Development (RD) minister Naresh Jamatia on Thursday dispelled fears about possible discontinuation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG NREGS) and said that there was no such instruction from the central government yet. “We have noticed widespread confusion over the subject among the people. We haven’t received any such communication from the Government of India yet”, RD minister Jamatia said.

He added that a recent letter from the Ministry of Rural Development asked the state government to identify 15 ‘backward blocks’ in the state based on a set of parameters prescribed by the central government. The letter said that the Ministry had resolved to lay greater focus on the backward blocks as a part of the Labour Budget exercise for 2015-2016. It added that an intensive participatory planning exercise (IPPE) was prescribed to be conducted in 2,500 backward blocks of the country including 15 from Tripura.

A backwardness index developed by the Planning Commission using the Census 2011 data was prescribed to the state governments for figuring out the backward states. The index included percentage of people primarily dependent on agriculture, female literacy rate, households without access to electricity, safe drinking water and sanitary toilets within premises and households without access to banking facilities.

The exercise would be applicable in the implementation of the MG NREGS programmes in the next financial year, RD Principal Secretary Sanjay Kumar Rakesh said. He added that a tentative allocation of funds for MG NREGS might be taken for 2015-2016 as similar to the one available in the current financial year.

Speaking about the state government’s take on the possibilities of withdrawal of the NREGS, RD minister Naresh Jamatia said he personally felt the central government wouldn’t take such decisions since it went against the mandates of a central act involving livelihood guarantee of such large quantum of families.

He, however, said that identifying 15 blocks of the state which would get intensive drive for poverty alleviation is likely to prove tougher than it sounded.

Tripura currently has 6, 30,727 families having job cards. The NREGS job card holders are allowed a wage rate of Rs. 155 per man-day. With barely Rs. 108 crores released for the state out of Rs. 1,406 crores till date, the state has managed to generate barely 12 man-days in average till date. Unakoti district performed the worst among all districts of the state with an average generation of 9 man-days; North and Dhalai districts performed best with 15 mandays each.