Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samity (2025): MGNREGA wages

The Court directed the appropriate authority of the Central Government to bring on record the decisions being taken with regard to the release of pending wage and material payment under the Scheme prior to the date of the Ministry's order dated March 9, 2022, together with the Action Taken Reports dated October 23, 2024, January 3, 2025 and January 14, 2025. The State Government was directed to answer why a direction should not be issued to it for unemployment allowance, since admittedly employment was not being provided to the unemployed for the past two years. The Court also asked the Central Government to consider implementing the Scheme in the State in the first phase in districts other than the four under inquiry, with adequate checks and balances, and to examine how payments to the ultimate beneficiaries could be regulated directly. Compliance was directed within three weeks and the matters were listed under the same caption on May 15, 2025.

The order sits in the long-running litigation over the stoppage of MGNREGA funds to West Bengal. The Court recorded that a Central investigation team had recommended verification and consequential recovery of funds in four districts, Purba Bardhaman, Hooghly, Malda and Darjeeling (GTA area), and that the State Government had recovered Rs. 220.66 lakhs and credited it to the State Nodal Account of MGNREGS, West Bengal. The statutory frame the Court applied is the power to stop the release of funds after an investigation by a designated agency, coupled with remedial measures for proper implementation within a reasonable period.

On the workers' side, the Court treated the unemployment allowance as a live statutory duty, requiring the State to show cause why it should not be directed, on the admission that employment had not been provided for two years. The order illustrates continuing supervision by a High Court over a welfare statute, with affidavits and action taken reports as the working record.

• Mahatma Gandhi NREG Act, 2005, s.7 - unemployment allowance, the duty pressed by the show-cause direction
• Mahatma Gandhi NREG Act, 2005 - the fund stoppage and investigation provision invoked in the order
• Constitution of India, Article 226 - writ jurisdiction under which the petitions were heard

Interim orders of this kind still produce paper a worker can use. Every affidavit, action taken report and fund-release decision named in the directions is a dated record held by a public authority, so an RTI application can seek the very documents the Court was reading, for any district. For a worker who got no work, the show-cause direction on unemployment allowance is a usable precedent that the allowance is justiciable and not a matter of grace: apply for work, keep the dated receipt of the application, and if no work comes within the statutory window, claim the allowance in writing and escalate. Group petitions through a union or association, as here, move a court faster than single petitions.

The 2005 Act stood repealed on 1 July 2026 and was replaced by the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, where the unemployment allowance sits in section 11, with payment to be made or offered not later than fifteen days from the date on which it became due, as the Act text on the e-Gazette shows.

• MGNREGA wage delay topic guide
• Swaraj Abhiyan v. Union of India (2016)
• MGNREGA muster rolls and proactive disclosure
• The 2025 Act that replaced MGNREGA
• Case-Law Database - overview
• Full case-law search
• AI RTI Drafter
• The RTI Playbook

• Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samity & Anr vs The Union Of India & Ors on 10 April, 2025, Calcutta High Court, https://indiankanoon.org/doc/18160280/
• Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, s.11(5), e-Gazette Act text

Last reviewed: 12 September 2026.