Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) scheme is severely underfunded and violating key provisions of the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, under which it was implemented.
Raising the issue during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, Gandhi said that the PMMVY was launched in 2017 and provided for maternity entitlements after child births for pregnant women in the informal sector.
Citing an analysis, Gandhi sought to know why the delivery of financial assistance under the scheme had dipped drastically. “According to an informed analysis for 2022-23, about 68 per cent of pregnant women received at least one instalment of PMMVY for their first birth, but in the very next year, this proportion fell drastically to just around 12 per cent. I would like to ask the Union government, why was this allowed to happen?” Gandhi asked.
Gandhi then went on to question why the recently presented Union Budget did not contain information on allocations for the PMMVY scheme. “The full implementation of the maternity benefits provision of the NFSA 2013 requires an annual budget of Rs 12,000 crore. It is surprising that the budget document does not contain information on allocations for the PMMVY separately. All that the documents reveal is that there is a programme called Samarthya in the WCD (women and child development) ministry, this has five components, of which PMMVY is one,” she said.
The Congress leader added, “The allocation in 2025-26 for Samarthya is only Rs 2,521 crore. This clearly shows that PMMVY is severely underfunded thereby violating key provisions of the law passed by Parliament.”
Gandhi also said earlier in her intervention that the NFSA, 2013, which was passed under the leadership of the late Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has been the foundation for the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana.
The PMMVY is a maternity benefit programme for women belonging to socially, economically disadvantaged and marginalised sections of the society, as per the Ministry of Women and Child Development. As part of the scheme, beneficiaries are given Rs 5,000 entitlements after the birth of the first child, in two instalments of Rs 3,000 and Rs 2,000, respectively. A second entitlement can be availed by mothers if their second child is a girl, and it is paid in a single instalment.
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