Kolkata, Feb 11 The Trinamool Congress (TMC), on Tuesday refuted the claims made by the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the floor of the Parliament regarding reported deletion of 25 lakh “fake job cards” under the 100-day job scheme under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
Trinamool Congress issued a counter-statement, which the party posted on its official X (formerly Twitter) handle and quoted a previous response in the matter by the Union minister of State Sadhvi Niranjan and claimed that as per that response, only 5,651 fake job cards were deleted over the two financial years of 2021-22 and 2022-23.
Trinamool Congress has also claimed that the figure on this count for West Bengal is much lower compared to the corresponding figures for Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.
“So why is Bengal being singled out and targeted? Why was Bengal’s MGNREGA funding halted while states with far higher deletions continue receiving funds? @VJP4India is starving the poor, destroying livelihoods, and spreading lies to justify their ECONOMIC BLOCKADE,” the statement by Trinamool Congress read.
In another statement also posted on the party’s official X handle, Trinamool Congress has explained why the West Bengal government is running its own health insurance scheme in the state instead of allowing the implementation of the central scheme on this count, Ayushman Bharat.
According to the statement, the central scheme has stringent eligibility criteria under which millions of people are reportedly denied the safety net of affordable healthcare.
According to the statement, even CAG has repeatedly flagged ‘glaring discrepancies’ in the implementation of the central scheme. On the contrary, Trinamool Congress has claimed, West Bengal's own health insurance scheme bears the full responsibility of providing universal healthcare coverage to 2.45 crore families in the state.
In a third statement, Trinamool Congress has described the Union government’s “Jal Jeevan Mission” scheme as total failure and argued that out of total allocation of Rs 70,162 crore under the scheme, only Rs 21,544 have been utilized.
According to Trinamool Congress, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh are the worst sufferers on this count.
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