6 million new job cards issued under MGNREGS every year, Centre tells LS

Minister of State for Rural Development Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani told the Lok Sabha that 57 per cent of the rural development budget is allocated for the MGNREGS

Six million new job cards are issued under the MGNREGS on average every year and the government has no role in the deletion of the job cards which is done based on various parameters, the Centre said on Tuesday.

Minister of State for Rural Development Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani told the Lok Sabha that 57 per cent of the rural development budget is allocated for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and asserted that Aadhaar-seeding of the cards enhances transparency.

He was responding to Congress leader K C Venugopal, who claimed that the names of 10.43 crore MGNREGS workers have been deleted in the last four years.

Venugopal also wanted to know whether the deletions were linked to the Aadhaar-seeding requirement.

"Ninety-nine per cent of all job card holders have Aadhaar seeding. Aadhaar seeding is nothing but to increase transparency. It is not an obstacle," the minister said during the Question Hour.

According to Pemmasani, the deletion of job cards is based on five factors, including fake or duplicate cards and a person moving from one panchayat to another.

In case of the death of a person or if a person does not want to work under the scheme or if the area where the person works becomes urban from rural, then also cards get deleted, he said.

Pemmasani noted that the deletion of the cards is the responsibility of the state governments and the "central government does not have any role whatsoever in job (card) deletions".

Providing data, the minister said that on average, every year, 60 lakh new job cards are issued.

"On average, 30 lakh job cards are deleted due to various reasons. The total number of job cards are around 13-14 crore... total number of active job cards is around 9.2 crore," he added.