Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Thursday requested the Centre to Rs 676.57 crore to pay the wages under the MGNREGA scheme till December 2017.
In a letter to Union Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, the Chief Minister sought his intervention for the release of the funds. Patnaik said the Centre was supposed to release `2,290.19 crore to the state by December-end but it had released only `1,613.62 crore (including pending liability) till date, denoting a shortfall of `676.57 crore.
The Chief Minister urged for the release of the funds or permission to the state government to disburse wages to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme workers through e-FMS mode out of its own funds, subject to reconciliation of the amount on receipt of necessary allocation from the Ministry. A request for utilisation of the corpus funds was sent to the Ministry October 16.
The state government has declared 5,958 villages falling in 1,097 gram panchayats in 70 blocks in 15 districts as drought-affected.
PNN
