Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren on Saturday expressed dissatisfaction at the Centre’s selection of only three districts of the state in the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Yojana launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for migrant workers, a day after moving the Supreme Court against the Union government’s decision of going ahead with coal block auctions for commercial mining.

“Why only three districts from Jharkhand have been selected for the scheme when several other districts have also witnessed return of over 25,000 migrants? It seems the launching of the scheme by the Prime Minister was aimed at wooing voters in view of the Bihar Assembly polls,” said Soren in Ranchi on Saturday evening.

Soren’s dig was aimed at Modi who launched the scheme at Telihar village in Bihar’s Khagaria district through video conferencing.

“The chief minister was not happy with the selection of only three districts — Godda, Giridih and Hazaribagh — for the scheme when 12 districts have witnessed the return of more than 25,000 migrant workers amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The selection of the districts has been done in an arbitrary manner and we will be writing to the Prime Minister for inclusion of more districts in the scheme,” said a senior official in the chief minister’s secretariat.

The scheme aims to boost livelihood opportunities in rural India and the campaign will be of 125 days. It will work in a mission mode involving an intensified and focussed implementation of 25 different types of works to provide employment to the migrant workers and create infrastructure in rural areas, with a resource envelope of Rs 50,000 crore.

“A total of 116 districts with more than 25,000 returnee migrant workers in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha have been chosen for the campaign. The Union government has selected only three districts from Jharkhand, claiming May 30 as the cut-off date (by which 25,000 migrant workers had returned to the district). We hope more districts are added in the next phase,” said state rural development secretary Aradhana Patnaik.

Incidentally, rural development would be the nodal department for the execution of the programme that will see coordinated efforts between 12 different departments.

Soren also expressed displeasure at the Centre’s hastiness in launching the process of auctioning for coal mining.

“We had sought a moratorium for six to nine months of the auction process but the central government was in undue haste and the Prime Minister launched the auction on Thursday, ignoring our demands. We had no option but to knock on the door of the Supreme Court to stay the auction process,” he said.

The Jharkhand government filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court on Friday through advocate Tapesh Kumar Singh, stating that the auction decision was illegal as there was no law to guide mining activities because of the legal vacuum created by the lapse of the Mineral Laws (Amendment) Act, 2020, on May 14.

The petition had also said before starting the auction, the Centre failed to carry out a fair assessment of adverse social and environmental impact on the tribal population and vast tracts of forestland in the state.

According to data collected from the Union coal ministry, out of the 41 blocks put on sale for commercial mining across the country, nine are from Jharkhand.