Lakhs of fake and invalid NREGS job cards scrapped

NEW DELHI: The government has scrapped lakhs of job cards across the country in a first-of-itskind attempt to clean up the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, weeding out fakes or wrongly allotted ones.
Officials said the total number of job cards has been brought down from 13 crore last year to 12.48 crore in 2016-17 so far, after a massive exercise over the past one year revealed several cases of misappropriation and deceased persons still enrolled in the scheme.

“We have become more vigilant about the scheme, which is why there have been a large number of deletions,” said a senior government official, who did not wish to be identified. While there have been a few additions as well, the number of active workers has declined from 11.04 crore to 10.85 crore in the past one year.





During this period, the total number of gram panchayats which have incurred nil expenditure under NREGS, fell to its lowest ever of 22,885 from more than 39,499. While weeding out invalid job cards will be a continuous exercise, the government is also concerned about delayed payments under the scheme, officials said.

Only 47% of payments are being made within the stipulated time limit of 15 days. “We are engaging with the banks on a weekly basis to bring down the pendency of financial transaction order…A lot of money is going into the states through NREGS but delay is a matter of concern,” the official cited earlier said.

The government has released Rs 40,869 crore to states this year for wage payment under the scheme. Five states including Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have been allowed 50 extra days of work allocation in the current fiscal due to drought situation.

With many parts of the country reeling under drought or drought-like conditions for the past two years owing to deficient monsoon, there has been more pressure on the scheme to generate employment for rural poor.

The scheme has generated 167.38 crore person days in 2016-17 so far compared to 166 crore in the entire 2014-15. In 2015-16, the scheme generated 235 crore person days. The government is expecting a further rise in the demand for work after the harvest festival of Pongal.

“With the rabi harvest over there is a greater demand for work under NREGS, especially since people don’t have to leave their villages to find employment,” the official said. The rural development ministry has sought a higher allocation of Rs 48,000 crore for the scheme in the upcoming Budget.