NEW DELHI: Senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday accused the government of severely underfunding maternity entitlements under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, and questioned why the number of beneficiaries had dropped drastically.
Raising the Issue in the Rajya Sabha during Zero Hour, Gandhi said the “non-fulfilment” of maternity entitlements under the NFSA and the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), launched in 2017, was a “matter of great concern”.
“The NFSA, passed in September 2013 under the leadership of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has been the foundation for the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana,” she said.
“The NFSA includes a maternity entitlement of Rs 6,000 per child for pregnant women in the informal sector. The Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), launched in 2017, seeks to fulfil this entitlement. It provides only Rs 5,000 for the first child, with an extension to the second child if it is a girl,” Gandhi noted.
Citing an “informed analysis”, the Congress leader pointed out that around 68 per cent of pregnant women received at least one instalment of PMMVY for their first birth in 2022-23, but in the next year, it “drastically dropped” to 12 per cent. “I would like to ask the Union government why it has allowed this to happen,” she said.
“The full implementation of the maternity benefits provision under the NFSA requires an annual budget of around Rs 12,000 crore. Surprisingly, the budget documents do not contain separate information on allocations for PMMVY,” she said, adding that the only reference was under the ‘Samarthya’ vertical of ‘Mission Shakti’, which has been allocated just Rs 2,521 crore.
“This clearly shows that the PMMVY is severely underfunded, thereby violating the key provisions of the law passed by Parliament,” she said.
This was Gandhi’s third intervention during the ongoing Rajya Sabha session. On February 10, she urged the government to conduct the long-overdue decennial Census, arguing that around 14 crore more people, currently excluded from the mandatory food security net, could be included.
On March 18, she accused the Modi government of “systematically undermining” MGNREGA and demanded an increase in the minimum wage under the scheme to Rs 400 per day and a rise in guaranteed workdays from 100 to 150 per year.