New Delhi, March 14: Seven districts of Bengal and two of Jharkhand are among 130 fresh districts the Centre has identified for implementation of the second phase of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

The act at present covers 200 districts.

In his budget speech on February 28, finance minister P. Chidambaram had announced that the act would be extended to 130 fresh districts during the current fiscal.

The seven districts of Bengal to be brought under the act are Cooch Behar, Nadia, Burdwan, East Midnapore, North 24-Parganas, Hooghly and Darjeeling. The employment guarantee act currently covers 10 districts of Bengal.

Jharkhand’s East Singhbum and Deoghar are the two districts on the list announced last week. Twenty districts in Jharkhand are already covered by the act.

Rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad told the Lok Sabha last week that the list of 17 districts of Uttar Pradesh to be brought under the employment guarantee scheme in the second phase would be issued separately. The schedule for elections in the state has been announced.

Singh said in the 200 districts, where the employment guarantee act was notified on February 2, 2006, the scheme had so far generated jobs for 1.66 crore households.

Besides Uttar Pradesh, the other states providing a substantial number of districts to the new list are Bihar (15) and Madhya Pradesh (13).

The north-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura together account for 23 districts in the new list.

In the south, six districts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, four of Tamil Nadu and two of Kerala are on the list.