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 during a Zero Hour mention in the Rajya Sabha, Gandhi said the 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.

She said the National Food Security Act (NFSA), passed by Parliament in September 2013 under then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, laid the foundation for the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY), which was launched during Covid-19 to provide foodgrains to poor families. PMGKY currently has 81 crore beneficiaries.

Under the NFSA, pregnant women were entitled to a maternity benefit of Rs 6,000 per child, paid in two instalments.

However, PMMVY, launched in 2017 to fulfil this entitlement, provides only Rs 5,000 for the first child, extending benefits to a second child only if it is a girl.

“According to an analysis for 2022-23, about 68 per cent of pregnant women received at least one instalment of PMMVY for their first birth. However, this number drastically dropped to 12 per cent in the following year. I would like to ask the Union government why this was allowed to happen,” Gandhi said.

She also questioned why PMMVY was not separately mentioned in Union Budget documents.

“The full implementation of 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 under the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It has five components, of which PMMVY is one.

“The allocation for Samarthya in 2025-26 is only Rs 2,521 crore. This clearly shows that the PMMVY is severely underfunded, thereby violating key provisions of the law passed by Parliament,” she added.

This is the second time in the current sitting of the Rajya Sabha Budget Session where Gandhi has raised an issue. On March 18, she criticised the dilution of employment guarantees under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).