Maternity scheme severely underfunded: Sonia Gandhi.

Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said the government’s flagship programme to provide maternity benefits to pregnant women is “severely underfunded”, resulting in a drastic fall in entitlements to beneficiaries. Raising the issue through a Zero Hour mention in the Rajya Sabha, she said Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) has seen a drastic fall in the number of beneficiaries and asked the government why this was allowed to happen.

Mrs. Sonia Gandhi said the National Food Security Act (NFSA), passed by Parliament in September 2013 under the leadership of the then prime minister Manmohan Singh in September 2013, has been the foundation for PM Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY), which was launched during Covid-19 to provide food grains to poor families. PMGKY currently has 81 crore beneficiaries. Under NFSA, pregnant women were entitled to maternity benefit of Rs 6,000 per child, paid in two instalments.

It is noteworthy that PMMVY was launched in 2017 to fulfil this entitlement. But under PMMVY, only Rs 5,000 is given for the first child and the benefits are extended to the second child only if it is a girl.

“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 this number drastically dropped to 12% in the following year. I would like to ask the Union government why this was allowed to happen”, she asked.

She has also questioned the provision for PMMVY not being separately mentioned in the Union Budget documents. “The full implementation of the maternity benefits provision 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.

All that the Budget documents reveal is that there is a programme called Samarthya in the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It has five components, of which PMMVY is one. “The allocation in 2025-26 for Samarthya is only Rs 2,521 crore. This clearly shows that the PMMVY is severely underfunded, thereby violating the key provisions of the law passed by Parliament”, she said.

However, this is the second time in the current budget session of the Rajya Sabha, where Mrs. Sonia Gandhi has raised an issue. On March 18^th., she had raised concern over the dilution of employment guarantee under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

Team Maverick