MGNREGA CLEANUP: 4.5 lakh bogus job cards junked

 Fund leakage

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, Aug 17: The BJP-led coalition government in Assam has cancelled 4.5 lakh fake job cards issued by the erstwhile Congress regime in a bid to plug a major source of fund leakage in Mahatma Gandhi tiol Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

MGNREGA is one of the world’s biggest employment guarantee schemes launched by the erstwhile UPA regime at the Centre to ensure employment to rural population through one job card for each family. The job card holds the key to securing a job in creating village assets and receiving payment for the same. Every job card holder is entitled to employment under MGNREGA.

State Panchayat & Rural Development Minister ba Kumar Doley told The Sentinel that the government has cancelled 4.5 lakh job cards found to be bogus during a review of all such cards issued to the rural populace in the State so far. Review of 95 per cent of total job cards issued in the State has been completed by the present regime in Dispur. 

Sources said soon after the BJP-led coalition came to power in the State last year, it gave a major thrust on issuing job cards to only genuine rural beneficiaries in view of mounting allegations and reports that the previous Congress regime resorted to large scale malpractices in issuing such cards. 

Even though the previous Congress regime issued 41.39 lakhs job cards, only 24.12 lakh rural households were found to have used the card, leaving ample scope to suspect that large numbers of cards were issued without verifying real needs of income and employment of card holders. 

Sources said during review of MGNREGA job cards, the State government had unearthed several anomalies. While some job cards were issued in the me of genuine persons, these were being used by bogus card holders. 

“When a job card holder dies, the card should be handed over to the concerned authorities for the sake of deletion of me of the deceased. But in many such cases, cards were continued to be used even after death of the beneficiary,” the source said, adding that many job cards were found to be duplicate and issued in fraudulent manner. 

In the initial years of MGNREGA, there were reports of rampant corruption as the process was mostly manual. Fake entries were made in job sheets to divert funds, while job cards existed in non-existent mes. In many cases, people held multiple cards in a bid to draw added benefits.