Mr. Navjot Singh Sidhu, MP has said that the Punjab Govt. should owe the responsibility for not doing much under the Centre sponsored National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) which is meant for providing minimum 100 days work to rural poor in villages.<br/><br/>He said that the Rural Development Department of the state should take cognizance of it as this scheme if properly implemented can make villagers self-sufficient by providing them financial aid in the shape of wages which have been increased from Rs 123 to Rs. 133 per day earlier.<br/><br/>Addressing a press conference in Jalandhar on Tuesday, Mr. Sidhu giving figures of the fund demanded by Punjab Govt. from the Centre under the scheme in the last financial year and this financial year said that the state govt. is demanding quite less as compare to neighbouring as well as other states.<br/><br/>Punjab has asked for much less than Rs. 100 crore in these two financial years as compare to Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. Even this year’s figure Rs. 53.97 crore till date is less than last year’s total Rs. 67.75 crore.<br/><br/>Terming these figures as very disturbing especially when the state has 3.44 lakh BPL families, Mr. Sidhu said that since this is demand based programme, limitless work can be done under it for solving various problems faced by rural areas along with providing employment to unemployed.<br/><br/>Favouring a performance driven assessment of the work done under NREGS and how many benefited with it, the BJP MP said that the Deputy Commissioners of the various districts of the state are slow to comply with the guidelines to properly implement it.<br/>