Legal decks have been cleared for the rollout of the VB-G RAM G scheme in Karnataka with the State government issuing a notification in this regard on Thursday. The notification comes on the eve of the meeting of RDPR Ministers convened by the Centre in Delhi on Friday.

Karnataka RDPR Minister Eshwar Khandre told presspersons in Bengaluru that the government had decided to roll out the new version of the employment guarantee scheme in the interest of poor, farmers, Dalits and women though it would increase the share of funds to be provided by the State six-fold.

The Minister pointed out that the earlier version of this scheme had prescribed a fund-sharing proportion of 90:10 under which the State had to bear only 10% of the project cost unlike the present system. “Of the total project cost of about ₹61,000 crore under the earlier scheme in the last 20 years, the Centre itself had spent about ₹56,000 crore while the State had spent just ₹4,800 crore. But now, the State needs to spend ₹3,806 crore on the new version of the scheme for this year itself,” he pointed out.

In addition to this, the Centre had declared a holiday of 60 days during the harvesting period, the Minister said.

Mr. Khandre said he had registered the State’s opposition to the fund-sharing formula of the scheme during a recent meeting with Union Minister Shivaraj Singh Chauhan.

Mr. Khandre said Friday’s meeting would discuss various issues related to implementation of recommendations by the 16th Finance Commission. Alleging that Karnataka had been meted out injustice by the 15th Finance Commission, the Minister expressed concern that the State was yet to get its share of ₹2,186 crore for 2025-26 as per the recommendation by the 15th Finance Commission.