The government today dismissed the media reports which claimed that the rural employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREG) has dipped by 16 per cent in the first half of the current year. The Rural Development Ministry said that MGNREG Scheme is a demand driven scheme and the current financial year is still ongoing, therefore it is not possible to fix an exact target of person days generation. The Ministry noted that the total person days generated between 2014-15 to 2024-25 were 2,923 crore whereas, the total person days generated between 2006-07 to 2013-14 were only 1,660 crore. The MGNREG Scheme aims at enhancing livelihood security of households in rural areas by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

The Ministry also mentioned that Adhaar seeding has been done for around 13 crore active workers, which is 99.3 percent of total active workers. It enabled to minimise the rejection of transactions due to the frequent changing of accounts. The Ministry highlighted that in the current financial year 86 thousand crore rupees has been allocated for MGNREG, which is the highest since the inception of this scheme. In addition, the minimum average notified wage rate has been increased by seven per cent.