Great Loot Of NREGS: Milking flagship scheme dry

INDORE: The great loot of the Centre's flagship scheme - NREGS - that provides employment at the grassroots is of such mammoth proportion in Madhya Pradesh that not even a trickle reaches real beneficiaries.
While the state's jobless rural population are left high and dry, school teachers, anganwadi workers and even retired government officials are on payroll of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which guarantees 100 days of manual employment a year.
Names of government officials were included in panchayat muster rolls and funds are being diverted to their fraudulent accounts for work they never did.
Wage payment data of Dodar panchayat of Jawa in Rewa district shows one Rashmiprasad Mishra and his wife Neelam enrolled as 'labourers' for construction of a pond. A probe by commissioner's office revealed Mishra is actually a teacher at Itma government high school and the couple never worked as NREGA workers. A copy of the report is in TOI's possession.
In another example of fraudulent diversion of NREGA wage funds, government officials - both incumbent and retired - doubled up as NREGA workers in projects of the forest department, Rewa.
Retired police official Ramnarayan (muster roll number 63324), retired telecom official Ramlakhan, Hema Dwivedi, principal of a government school and many others have been declared as NREGA beneficiaries for work carried out by forest department in Rewa. Payments have also been released in their names. A copy of the documents confirming names of these officials enlisted in muster roll is in possession with TOI.
In another case, Lalita Patel, an anganwadi worker of Amilaki village of Rewa, is enlisted as an NREGA worker (muster roll number 139310). An official probe report confirmed Patel's name in the muster roll and his employment status as anganwadi worker. TOI has a copy.
Speaking to TOI, Madhya Pradesh NREGA commissioner Ravindra Pastor admitted government employees were fraudulently enlisted as NREGA workers in several panchayats in the state. "Acting on such fraud cases, we have seized 55 lakh bank accounts," he said.