EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE BILL

With the passage of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill 2005 (NREGB 2005), the documents on this page have now been superceded. The full text of the final bill is available here.

This is the full text of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill 2004, as it was tabled in Parliament on December 21. [Hindi]

For a detailed comparison between of NREGB 2004 with the draft prepared by the National Advisory Council, click here. [Hindi]

For further critiques of NREGB 2004, see the Critiques section. For related documents see also the Draft Acts section.

For related documents see also the Draft Acts and critiques sections.

The Bill has been sent to a Standing Committee of Parliament. For the composition of the committee, click here. It is hoped that the Standing Committee will invite comments on the NREGB 2004 from the public.

A “Group of Ministers” (GoM) has also been formed to examine the Bill in the light of recent criticisms. This GoM is chaired by Pranab Mukherjee (Defence Minister), and other members are: P. Chidambaram (Finance Minister), Sharad Pawar (Food Minister), Bharadwaj (Law Minister), Mani Shankar Aiyar (Minister, Panchayati Raj), K. Chandrashekhar Rao (Labour Minister), Kapil Sibal (Minister of Science and Technology), Raghuvansh Prasad Singh (Minister of Rural Development), Montek Singh Ahluwalia (Planning Commision).