The Narendra Modi government did not follow the due process of law before stopping the release of funds to Bengal under 100-day rural job scheme MGNREGA and the state’s dues have ballooned to Rs 6,907 crore as of September 29, former finance minister Amit Mitra said on Saturday.

Hitting out at the Centre for denying what is due to Bengal and many Opposition-ruled states, Mitra alleged during a virtual news conference on “Federalism and Democracy in Jeopardy” that the Modi government had flouted rules and the federal structure of the country in the “worst possible manner”.

Mitra’s media conference appeared part of a multi-pronged strategy of Trinamul — with Abhishek Banerjee’s dharna outside Raj Bhavan after two days of protest in Delhi as its pivot — to bolster the narrative of central deprivation of Bengal.

Mitra, the principal chief adviser to the Bengal chief minister, noted that the Union ministry of rural development had stopped releasing funds from December 24, 2021, but did not invoke Section 27 of The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, till March 9, 2022. Under Section 27, the Centre can withhold the release of funds under the 100-day job scheme if it receives complaints of irregularities, sources said. According to Mitra, invoking Section 27 is a prerequisite for holding back funds.

Mitra said: “They did not follow the spirit or the letter of the law... if you want to stop payment to any state. Now they stopped it on December 24, 2021, without the letter of law. Then they woke up and invoked Section 27. So on March 9, 2022, almost three months later, they invoked Section 27 to stop the release of funds to Bengal under the MGNREGA without following the due process all the way from December.”

He insisted that the Centre must pay interest on the money “illegally” held up. In Bengal’s case, the interest component could be Rs 200 crore and the amount pending between December 24 and March 9 is around Rs 1,500 crore, Mitra said.

While Mitra pointed to procedural loopholes in the manner in which the Centre had implemented the funds freeze, a senior state government official said the Union government had stopped the release of funds “very cleverly” before invoking Section 27 of the MGNREGA.

“The state government had exhausted in November 2021 the approved labour budget of generating 36.42 crore mandays for the 2021-22 financial year. But the state had carried on with the scheme expecting that the additional mandays would be approved by Delhi. But Delhi stopped the funds flow on the pretext that prior approval was not taken before generating the additional mandays,” the bureaucrat said.

Amid the debate on whether the Centre followed the rulebook, several senior officials said the decision might backfire on Delhi.

“Common people don’t want to know whether rules were followed to prevent the release of funds. They know they did not get money even after working. The ruling party in Bengal has rightly pointed out the issue, which has left the BJP in a spot,” said a bureaucrat.

During the news conference, Mitra was asked whether the Bengal government would seek legal recourse. He said a few NGOs had already moved court and the state would watch how the case panned out.