Modi government not considering any proposal to provide unemployment allowance

New Delhi: The Centre is not considering any proposal to provide unemployment allowance to jobless persons as the country is not in a position to incur huge expenditure on this, Parliament was informed Wednesday.

"Government of India does not have any proposal for providing any unemployment allowance to the unemployed persons. The country is not in a position to incur huge expenditure involved on the payment of unemployment allowance to unemployed youth," Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

However, some of the state/ UT governments are providing unemployment allowances to youth from their own resources," he added.

According to the statement, there were 91.41 lakh graduate and post graduate-degree holders who were unemployed in the country in 2013 as per employment exchange data including 48.22 lakh men and 43.19 lakh women.

In a separate reply, the minister told the House that as many as 2,216 bonded labourers were released and rehabilitated in the current fiscal till December 2015.

All bonded labourers were rescued from Uttar Pradesh during the current fiscal.

In 2014-15, all 853 bonded labourers were rescued from Chhattisgarh.

However in 2013-14, a total of 1,978 bonded labourers were released and rehabilitated including 28 in Odisha, 150 in Rajasthan and 1,800 in Uttar Pradesh.