The Uttarakhand government on Thursday decided to liberalise norms for the unemployment allowance scheme in the face of stinging criticism from the opposition.
The scheme, which was launched with much fanfare on November 9 last year, had failed to find favour with the unemployed people due to its stringent norms. The scheme had covered only 834 youths in the first one month since its launch which was a minuscule 0.11 per cent of the total population of the state, though Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna claimed that the government received nearly 4,000 applications.
In order to accommodate more beneficiaries, a meeting of the state cabinet held at the secretariat here decided to raise the limit of the family income from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh for getting the allowance, chief secretary Alok Kumar Jain said.
Jain said the cabinet also decided to remove the cap of one person per family under the new norms. Earlier, only the eldest of the applicants in a family was entitled for such allowance.
In another amendment, the cabinet also decided that all those people who are registered with the unemployment exchange for at least four years would be entitled for the doles irrespective of their last qualification. There are three broad categories for unemployment allowance — Rs 500 to intermediates, Rs 750 to graduates and Rs 1,000 to post-graduates.
In the last Vidhan Sabha session, the main opposition BJP had raised the issue and described the scheme as “farce”. The leader of the opposition Ajay Bhatt said that there were virtually no takers for the scheme in the state.
However, the chief minister said the scheme would cover a total of 60,000 youths.
Fulfilling a key assembly election promise, the government on November 9 launched the unemployment allowance scheme despite facing the heat of the acute financial crunch. On the first day itself, the chief minister gave unemployment doles to nearly 100 persons to kick-start the scheme. But thereafter, the scheme did not pick up any momentum.
With unemployment rising in the state, the government is finding it difficult to cover all the educated unemployed youths who have been registered at the unemployment exchanges of the state. The government’s real worry is that out of the total 7.03 lakh registered unemployed youths, more than 90 per cent of them are educated ones.
There had been steep rise of nearly 1.40 lakh unemployment youths compared to the last year’s figure of 5.65 lakh.
In order to restrict the number of beneficiaries, the government had determined the criteria for availing the unemployment allowance under which youths must be in the 25-35 years age group and should have completed four years of registration with the unemployment exchange with effect from November 9 last year.
