ALL INDIA Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Digvijay Singh today alleged that job cards under Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the State are being given to well-off persons also who do not need a job for Rs 60 a day.
In a letter to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Singh referred to his visit to Mandla district and said that job cards have been issued to even Government officials and businessmen who were not consulted before making their job cards. Persons issued job cards under the scheme include a sub divisional officer (police) and a jeweller, he informed enclosing their job cards with his latter.
He suggested that such errors were taking place because the State Government has handed over task of preparing job card on contract in place of entrusting it to gram panchayats. And, the contractors carrying out the work were not even consulting the gram panchayats before making the job cards.
Stating that the BJP has always patronised contractors, he said the work of preparing job cards might have been given to contractors because of ‘vested interests’ of some BJP leaders though gram panchayats were better -equipped to carry out the task.
Singh said that Rural Job Guarantee Scheme was a revolutionary scheme aimed at providing job to unemployed people in far-off villages so that their migration in search of job could be stopped. But, migration from tribal-dominated districts like Dindori, Anuppur, Shahdol and Umaria has continued unabated.
{{/usCountry}}Singh said that Rural Job Guarantee Scheme was a revolutionary scheme aimed at providing job to unemployed people in far-off villages so that their migration in search of job could be stopped. But, migration from tribal-dominated districts like Dindori, Anuppur, Shahdol and Umaria has continued unabated.
{{/usCountry}}Urging the Chief Minister to implement the scheme without any political bias, he said people in backward districts of the State should be ensured its benefit.
He further said that all blocks of Anuppur and Burhanpur district should also be included among 18 districts of the State, where the scheme was being implemented.
He said the two districts were created in the year 2003 while the scheme was being implemented on the basis of census 2001, thereby making the two districts part of erstwhile Shahdol and Khanwa districts for the purpose of implementing this scheme.
Singh pointed out that the publicity of the scheme was being carried out by the State Government as if it were its own scheme.
He said that the State Government was well within its right to name the scheme ‘MP Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme’ but publicity material being used by the State Government to propagate the scheme should at least carry photographs of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in addition to that of the Chief Minister.