"Uttar Pradesh: Of Rs 425 Crore Allocated for Workers in Unorganised Sector, Not a Penny Utilised", 14 April 2025

In spite of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s claims regarding comprehensive development in the state, the government has failed to take any action for the over 45 million workers in the unorganised sector in recent years. The state’s budget exceeds Rs 8 lakh crores. However, surprisingly, the Yogi administration has not allocated any funds over the past four years for the benefit of workers in the unorganised sector.

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Responding to the RTI query, the board stated that during the initial three financial years, “Rs 112 crore annually” and “Rs 92 crore for the year 2024-25” were allocated for various schemes. However, these funds remained unutilised as no programs were implemented for the unorganised workforce. In the past four years, the Yogi Adityanath administration has neither implemented any programs for the unorganised sector workers in the state nor spent any funds on such initiatives.The social security board responded that Rs 5 lakh were allocated for the financial year 2021-22, and Rs 7,80,000 were earmarked for each of the years 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-25 for the promotion of these schemes. However, this funding remained unspent due to the absence of any operational schemes. Clearly, when the department was not implementing any programs, their promotional efforts were pointless.

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According to the Union government’s e-Shram portal, there are over 30.68 crore unorganised sector workers in the country, with women constituting more than half of this population (53.68%). Among them, approximately 8 crore 38 lakh workers are registered in Uttar Pradesh, making for about 27.5% of the total workforce. Despite these significant numbers, the state government lacks any initiatives aimed at improving their conditions. The harassment of contract workers is prevalent in UP, and the abundance of available labour in the market brings down their wages. Nevertheless, the government claims that it has not received any requests for assistance from these workers in the past four years.