Maternity scheme severely underfunded, says Sonia
Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said the government’s flagship programme to provide maternity benefits to pregnant women was “severely underfunded”, resulting in a drastic fall in entitlements to beneficiaries.
Raising the issue during zero hour in the Rajya Sabha, she said the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) had seen a drastic fall in the number of beneficiaries.
Gandhi said the National Food Security Act (NFSA), passed by Parliament under the leadership of the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in September 2013, had been the foundation for the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY), which was launched during the pandemic to provide foodgrain to poor families. The PMGKY currently has 81 crore beneficiaries.
Under the NFSA, a pregnant woman got maternity benefit of Rs 6,000 per child, paid in two instalments. The PMMVY was launched in 2017 to fulfil this entitlement. But under the 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, around 68 per cent of pregnant women received at least one instalment of the PMMVY for their first birth, but this number drastically dropped to 12 per cent (in) the following year. I would like to ask the Centre why this was allowed to happen?” she said.
She also questioned the provision for PMMVY not being separately mentioned in the 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 the 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. “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.
