JOIN USMigrant outreach: PM Modi to launch Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan
Centre on Thursday announced an ambitious rural public works scheme ‘Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan’ worth Rs 50,000 crore to empower and provide livelihood opportunities to the returnee migrant workers and rural citizens in six states, which have a high number of migrants, who returned back home from big cities during the 68-days long national level lockdown clamped to fight COVID-19.
Four months before Bihar goes to state polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch this scheme in presence of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi on June 20 from a village Telihar in Beldaur of Khagaria district of the state. The chief ministers of other five states--- Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha as well as Union Ministers in-charge of 12 different ministries and departments, which will together coordinate the scheme, will also participate in the virtual launch.
The villages across 116 districts in the six states will join this programme through the Common Service Centres and Krishi Vigyan Kendras, maintaining the norms of social distancing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The campaign will create durable infrastructure along with boosting employment opportunities such as - public works worth Rs 50,000 crore will be carried out under this Abhiyaan, a government release said.
The government said that this campaign of 125 days, which will work in mission mode, will involve intensified and focused implementation of 25 different types of works to provide employment to the migrant workers, on one hand, and create infrastructure in the rural regions of the country, on the other hand. A total of 116 districts with more than 25,000 returnee migrant workers across these six states have been chosen for the campaign which includes 27 aspirational districts. These districts are estimated to cover about two-thirds of such migrant workers.
The scheme will be a coordinated effort of 12 different ministries/departments, namely, Rural Development, Panchayati Raj, Road Transport & Highways, Mines, Drinking Water & Sanitation, Environment, Railways, Petroleum & Natural Gas, New & Renewable Energy, Border Roads, Telecom and Agriculture.
The migrant issue has kicked in huge politics in states with large migrant populations where elections are due in the next two years. In Bihar, which goes to polls this year by October, the Congress and the RJD have launched a campaign to put the BJP and NDA government at Centre and in the state on the mat alleging "mess" in migrant management and painting the government as anti-poor. West Bengal, which goes to polls next year saw a massive war of words on the issue between Home Minister Amit Shah and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
In Uttar Pradesh, where elections will be held in early 2022, Priyanka Gandhi proposed to run 1,000 buses to ferry migrants back to home and trained guns on Yogi Adityanath government of the state for allegedly not paying attention to the woes of migrants. In Delhi, Congress party had also released a video of Rahul Gandhi interacting with a group of migrants on the move talking about their hardships.
The campaign by the Opposition leaders had come in the back of visuals of migrants marching on foot for thousand kilometres back to their homes and hundreds of them having been killed in that process either due to accidents or suffering strokes and illness.
BJP is hopeful that the Abhiyan will blunt such criticism from the Opposition, which was out to take "political mileage of the humanitarian crisis".