NREGA: Govt took action in 9 embezzlement cases

Action was taken in just nine cases of embezzlement of funds in Government's flagship scheme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act since its inception in 2005, despite large number of complaints coming from across the country.

The quantum of irregularities can be gauged from the fact that during 11 months of last fiscal, Union Rural Development Ministry received 351 complaints of alleged embezzlement of funds in the NREGA.

According to an RTI reply from the Ministry, Uttar Pradesh alone has reported 130 complaints during the period, which is almost half the total number, followed by Madhya Pradesh (56), Bihar (46), Rajasthan (36), it said.

The ministry accepted that in only nine cases action has been taken since the Act was implemented in 2005.

The rural development ministry is the nodal agency for implementing and funding the MGNREGA which guarantees 100 days of employment in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The scheme covers all the 604 districts of the country.

"We cannot act directly on the complaints. We forward it to the concerned states who then carry out their investigation and send us the action taken report," an official of the ministry said.

The ministry said 20 complaints have been forwarded to different states during 2009-10 and in just two cases action was initiated against the erring officials by the respective states, the RTI reply to Abhishek Shukla said.

In six cases, the respective states replied that complaints were found baseless and in rest 12 cases the reply was still awaited from the state governments.

In its reply, the ministry said state governments have been given the powers and responsibility to set up mechanism to dispose complaints in the implementation of the scheme.

"The ministry of rural development has been receiving information from various sources on cases of anomalies and deviations in the implementation of the Act," it said.

An order has been issued in September last year to establish the office of Ombudsman at district level to receive complaints against the officials working under NREGA, the reply said.