Modi criticises Congress' implementation of MGNREGA

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday took a dig at the Congress for poor implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in the states.

Citing the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report of 2012, Modi said the Congress-led UPA government failed to get the scheme implemented to maximum effect in the poorest states.

He was replying to the motion of thanks on the President's address in the Lok Sabha.

"Kharge ji (Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge) said that there is corruption in MGNREGA, I agree with him 1000 percent. I don't disagree with it," said the prime minister.

He said the 2012 CAG report had stated that the scheme was implemented better in states where the population of the poor was less.

"But the states in which it was needed the most, the scheme was utilized the least. This means we could not target the poor through this scheme properly," Modi said.

The CAG report had also stated that even after seven years of its inception, there were five such states which did not even draft the rules of the scheme, he said.

"The sad part is that among the five, four are those states who sing the praises of the scheme," Modi added.