In accordance with the official government data, on June 15, 2020, Uttar Pradesh (UP) has provided employment to 57 lakh 12975 workers in 56,981 village panchayats of the state under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), making it the top Indian state to provide highest employment under MGNREGS.
- This employment is 18% of the total work generated under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in the country.
- UP is followed by Rajasthan, which has engaged 53.45 lakh workers, Andhra Pradesh (AP) with 36 lakh workers, West Bengal (WB) with 26 lakh and Madhya Pradesh (MP) with 23.95 lakh workers.
Key Points:
-The maximum number of workers in UP have been engaged in Sitapur district (about 1.91 lakh), followed by Basti (1.60 lakh).
-UP has generated 7.93 crore man-days and will provide jobs to 10 lakh more workers in the coming days.
-A total of 18 lakh construction workers have returned to the state, of them, 6.71 lakh are in rural areas and 8.86 lakh in urban areas. Those in urban areas are being given financial assistance of Rs 1,000 every month. Of them, about 41,000 workers are engaged in 3,000 projects of the Public Workers Department and another 20,000 in 926 projects of the Housing Development Board. This has provided a major relief to more than 30 lakh migrant labourers who have returned from other states to UP amid COVID-19.
Point to be noted: In FY19-20, the highest single-day engagement of labourers stood at 14 lakh, and around the same time last year, an average of about 9 lakh workers were engaged under the MGNREGS.
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS)
Mahatma Gandhi Employment Guarantee Act 2005, later renamed as the “Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act”(MGNREGA) was passed in September 2005.It is an Indian labour law that aims to guarantee the ‘right to work’.
- Objective – “enhancing livelihood security in rural areas by providing 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year, to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work”.
- The act was first proposed in 1991 by P.V. Narasimha Rao but it was finally introduced by Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Former Cabinet Minister of Rural Development.MGNREGA is to be implemented mainly by gram panchayats.
About UP:
Chief Minister– Yogi Adityanath
Capital– Lucknow
Governor– Anandiben Mafatbhai Patel
