EMPLOYMENT GENERATION UNDER MGNREGA

EMPLOYMENT GENERATION UNDER MGNREGA

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (Mahatma Gandhi NREGS) is a demand driven wage employment Scheme. In current financial year 2025-26 (as on 21.07.2025), a total number of 3.83 crore household availed employment and a total of 106.77 crore persondays have been generated under Scheme.

As per the provisions of the Act, beneficiaries are entitled to receive wage payments within 15 days of work completion. In order to ensure timely payment, the Government of India has issued a comprehensive Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to all States/UTs, which defines fixed timelines for each stage of the wage payment process—from muster roll uploading to FTO approval. The Ministry along with the States/UTs has been making concerted efforts for improving the timely payment of wages. States/UTs have been advised to generate pay orders in time.

The Ministry has taken various steps to ensure timely payment of wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). These include:

Further, continued efforts have been undertaken by the Ministry through various technological interventions for ensuring timely payments of wages. Some of the key interventions include:

Here it may be noted that Mahatma Gandhi NREGS is a demand-driven wage employment scheme. It is a fall-back option when no better employment opportunity is available. To provide adequate employment opportunities to willing rural households under Mahatma Gandhi NREGS, the Central Government has initiated several measures to generate awareness about the scheme. These include, (i) to initiate appropriate Information Education and Communication (IEC) campaigns including wall paintings for the wide dissemination of the provisions of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, (ii) to expand scope and coverage of demand registration system to ensure that demand for work under Mahatma Gandhi NREGA does not go unregistered, (iii) prepare plans in a participatory mode and approve them in the Gram Sabha, (iv) Organization of ‘Rozgar Diwas’.

As per Section 7(1) of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, “If an applicant for employment under the Scheme is not provided such employment within fifteen days of receipt of his application seeking employment or from the date on which the employment has been sought in the case of an advance application, whichever is later, he shall be entitled to a daily unemployment allowance in accordance with this section.”

This information was given by Minister of State for Rural Development Shri Kamlesh Paswan in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.