Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said that her government will seek arrears from the Centre in the wake of the Calcutta High Court’s order for restart of the MGNREGA, the 100-day rural job guarantee scheme, in the state after a gap of three years.

Rajya Sabha MP Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, who represented the state government in the High Court, told The Indian Express that the logical next step would be to pay the arrears. “We have been fighting the case for the last two years, and the Chief Justice came to the finding that it is the statutory obligation of both the Centre and the state government to ensure the 100-day work. And the court has passed an order to that extent, though belatedly. The arrears have to be paid. Under the law, you have to give the job or provide unemployment allowances. They have to pay the arrears to the job seekers who come under the scheme, and secondly, if the state government could justify that some arrears are there, then that will be paid,” the senior counsel said.

The BJP, however, said the restart of the MGNREGA scheme in the state would not “solve the problems”.

“We welcome the court order, but it will not solve the problem under any circumstances. The disbursement of the funds is in the hands of the Centre, and the Centre has the authority to discontinue projects if there are irregularities or violations of the basic norms. The state government has accepted that there have been irregularities. Neither the Centre, nor the state BJP wanted this project to stop, but due to TMC’s institutional corruption and non-cooperation, this situation emerged,” BJP MP Shamik Bhattacharya told The Indian Express.