Pro-farmers Rehab policy to be cleared by Cabinet soon: Raghuvansh

New Delhi, Feb 5 (UNI) The National Rehabilitation and Resettlement policy with thrust on rehabilitation prior to displacement would soon be coming to the National Cabinet for approval, Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said today.

Addressing the Editors' Conference on Social Sector Issues here, Dr Singh said under the new policy rich rehabilitation would be provided to people being evacuated. It would be ''pro-displaced persons'', instead of pro-evacuating authority as is prevalent at present, he added.

The Minister said the policy document had been circulated to various departments and once their response would be collected, it would be presente to the Cabinet for its clearance. He said the new policy would be applicable on all kinds of displacement, including SEZs.

Asked whether he was anti-SEZs, Dr Singh said, ''I am pro-farmers.

I am not against SEZs.'' Regarding the performance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act during one year of its implementation, the Minister said Bihar, where NREGA is being implemented in 23 districts, was amongst the worst performaing states while Andhra Pradesh and Dugurpur district of Rajasthan had performed better.

He said that Rs 9856.92 crore was available for the NREGA while Rs 7214.79 crore have been released during 2006-07, which include Rs 6674.98 crore by the centre and Rs 539.81 crore by states. During the past one year 3.47 crore job cards were issued and 1.51 crore households had demanded jobs of whom 1.47 households have been provided employment.

Of the 53.64 crore Mandays created under NREGA, 21.13 crore had gone to women which constitute 39.38%, he said and added that he was happy as the government wanted that at least 33 per cent of jobs should go to women workers. Scheduled Tribes had also benefited substantially from NREGA as they got 38.07 percent Mandays while Scheduled Castes got about 4.59% of work Mandays, he added.

He said under NREGA, 5.81 lakh works were taken up of which 2.34 lakh had been completed and 3.48 lakh were still in progress. Among the works taken, 23.24% were road construction while 64.05% were water-based works focusing on water. Moreover, water conservation and harvesting, micro irrigation, drought proofing, renovation of traditional water bodies, land development, flood control, rural connectivity and irrigation facilties for SC/ST had also been taken up.

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