Three weeks after he called on Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh demanding a “social auditing mechanism” for effective implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday again led a delegation of party MPs to him, seeking further fine-tuning of UPA government’s flagship programme.

Mr Gandhi had an hour-long meeting with the Prime Minister in the presence of Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and discussed some concern areas in the implementation of the scheme, party sources said.

Areas of concern
Without spelling out what these areas of concern are, the sources said Mr Gandhi urged the Prime Minister to make the scheme more effective. There have already been indications from the Congress that the scheme could be made a year-round programme, as against its current nature of job guarantee of 100 days per year for the rural unemployed.

Mr Gandhi was accompanied by party MPs Tushar Amarsinh Choudhury, Jitin Prasada, Deepindar Hooda, Sandeep Dixit, Pallam Raju, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Devbrat Singh.

Credit to party
Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Prithviraj Chavan was also present at the meeting. The meeting comes in the backdrop of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s instruction to party functionaries all over the country to ensure that the credit for NREG scheme and other such pro-people schemes must come to the Congress and not the allies or the state governments in Opposition-ruled states.

Mr Gandhi had called on Dr Singh on September 26 last, demanding that the scope of the scheme be expanded to the entire country with effect from April one, following which this year’s Union Budget expanded it to 596 districts of the country.