'Maternity scheme severely underfunded,' says Sonia Gandhi in Rajya Sabha

New Delhi: Top Congress leader Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday accused the Narendra Modi government of under-funding a scheme for pregnant women under the National Food Security Act, 2013 and asked why it has allowed the number of its beneficiaries to drop drastically.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, Sonia said the “non-fulfillment” of maternity entitlements under the NFSA and the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), which was launched in 2017, were a “matter of great concern”.

She said 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.

“The (NFSA) Act 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 fulfill this entitlement. It provides only Rs 5,000 for the first child, with an extension to the second child if it is a girl,” she said.

Quoting an “informed analysis”, she said about 68 per cent of pregnant women received at least one installment 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 this was allowed 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 while acknowledging the budget document’s reference to ‘Samarthya’ vertical under ‘Mission Shakti’, which has been allocated just Rs 2,521 crore.

‘Samarthya’ vertical has PMMVY, Shakti Sadan, Sakhi Niwas, Palna and SANKALP: Hub for Empowerment of Women (HEW) as its components.

“This clearly shows that the PMMVY is severely underfunded thereby violating the key provisions of the law passed by the Parliament,” she said.

This is Sonia’s third intervention during Rajya Sabha in the Budget Session. On February 10, she had urged the government to conduct the much delayed decennial Census at the earliest so that around 14 crore more people who are now left out of the mandatory food security net could be brought under it.

She had on March 18 accused the Modi government of “systematically undermining” the MGNREGA and demanded the raising of minimum wage under the scheme to Rs 400 per day and the number of guaranteed workdays from 100 to 150 a year.