Bhubaneswar: Over 8.76 lakh workers were removed from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Odisha between April and September, this year.
Implementation of the Aadhaar-based payment system (ABPS) is stated to be a major factor behind this, according to a report released by LibTech India.
Employment generation also plummeted in all districts during the period compared to the corresponding period of the previous year, the report ‘MGNREGA in Odisha: A Mid-year Analysis of Challenges and Opportunities’ added.
The number of registered workers in the state from April to September was 95 lakh. In the first six months, an average 8.7 lakh workers were removed from MGNREGA rolls. This placed Odisha as one of the top-three states in the country with the highest net deletions in the six-month period. During the same time, 1.3 lakh new workers were added but these additions were outpaced by 10.1 lakh deletions.
The report attributed the deletions to the Ministry of Rural Development’s push for ABPS which led to exclusion of many genuine workers. Field investigations in many districts like Koraput and Balangir revealed numerous cases where eligible workers were mistakenly deleted due to administrative lapses or technical mismatches
In January last year, the MoRD mandated an Aadhaar-based payment system for MGNREGS. “A study by our team revealed that under pressure to meet ABPS eligibility targets, officials resorted to deleting workers from the MGNREGA database when they could not fulfill the technical prerequisites for ABPS. This practice has been linked to various cases of wrongful deletions, leaving many genuine workers unable to access their rightful benefits,” Chakradhar Buddha, a researcher at LibTech India, was quoted by TNIE as saying.
At present, nearly 6.7 per cent of all MGNREGS workers in the state remain ineligible for ABPS.
The analysis also pointed to a whopping 48.4 pc drop in employment generated under the scheme. After an increase in person-days generated from 10.4 crore in the financial year 2022-23 to 11.3 crore – an 8.6 pc rise – a significant decline is observed in the current financial year (first six months), with persondays dropping to 5.8 crores (a 48.4 pc decrease).