CAG raps Centre, states on flagship rural job scheme

Spotlights numerous flaws, including non-payment of wages

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found a number of flaws in implementation of the government’s flagship programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

In its second performance audit of MGNREGS, from April 2007 to March 2012, it checked 3,848 gram panchayats in 28 states and four Union territories, on a request from the ministry of rural development. The first audit was undertaken in 2007-08.

In this report, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, it said there was a significant decline in the per household job generation in the past two years, from 54 days in 2009-10 to 43 days in 2011-12.  Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh had 46 per cent of the country’s rural poor but accounted for only about 20 per cent of the total funds released. “The poorest of the poor were not fully able to exercise their rights” under the scheme, it said.

The report said Rs 2,252 crore of inadmissible work was undertaken under the MGNREGS, including construction of earthen roads, bathing ghats and raised platforms for cattle.

The report found work amounting to Rs 4,070 crore was incomplete, while excess funds of Rs 2,375 crore were released by the ministry to six states due to a wrong calculation. The ministry was found to have released a sum of Rs 1,960 crore in March 2011, “contravening the norms of financial accountability.”

The audit mentioned “significant inefficiencies” in implementation of the annual plans. Of the total work amounting to Rs 126,961 crore approved in the annual plans, only 30 per cent was completed during the audit period, the report said.

The auditor has also pulled up the monitoring of the scheme at the central level. “The Central Council could not fulfill its statutory mandate of establishing a central evaluation and monitoring system even after six years of its existence,” it said.

CAG found various instances of non-payment and delayed payment of wages in 23 states. Besides, it  found 47,687 cases where the beneficiaries were neither provided employment on demand nor received an unemployment allowance, even after they obtained job cards.

It recommended that the staff position be closely monitored by the ministry and any shortfall taken up with the state governments and a model format for the accounts be developed.