Centre weakening MGNREGA: Cong flags ‘deletion’ of 27L names

The Congress on Monday accused the Centre of systematically weakening the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), citing the reported deletion of nearly 27 lakh names from the MGNREGA database between October 10 and November 14 this year.

Party leader Jairam Ramesh alleged that the government claimed that six lakh of these beneficiaries were active workers. He pointed out that the timing of the removals coincided with the rollout of a fresh “e-KYC” requirement for workers.

He claimed that the move was not an isolated exercise, but another attempt to deny India’s rural poor their right to employment.

According to him, the latest measure is part of a broader pattern of using Aadhaar-based digital systems to restrict access to the scheme.

Ramesh said earlier interventions such as the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app and the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) had already prevented an estimated 2 crore workers from securing their legal right to work and payment.

The party also reiterated its long-standing demand for a ‘substantial’ increase in the MGNREGA budget and stricter enforcement of timely wage payments. It has also pushed for raising the daily wage under the programme to Rs 400 to kick-start real income growth, the creation of a standing committee to determine wages, and an immediate halt to what it calls “exclusionary technology” such as the ABPS, NMMS and the e-KYC.