New Delhi, April 23
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has punched holes in the implementation of UPA’s flagship rural uplift programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The watchdog has pointed out deficiencies in job generation, wages payment and assets creation under the scheme, besides shortcomings in approval and release of funds by the Rural Development Ministry.

The CAG report tabled in Parliament today talked of significant decline in per rural household employment, delayed and even non-payment of wages, thereby highlighting the futility of the scheme for the people it was meant for.

According to the report, the per-rural household employment declined from 54 days in 2009-10 to 43 days in 2011-12. Apart from diversion of funds, unauthorised projects of about Rs 2,252 crore were undertaken in test gram sabhas while projects worth around Rs 4,070.76 crore remained incomplete even after one to five years of their launch.

Barely 30 per cent of the 129 lakh projects worth over Rs 1.26 lakh crore approved in 14 states have been completed. Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh used only 20 per cent of their funds.

A large percentage of beneficiaries claimed no change in their financial status, said the auditor making a strong pitch for centralised monitoring of the rural job scheme.

Many gram sabhas or local bodies had no proper annual plan and states like Haryana, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh-three of them ruled by the Congress-had not even formulated rules for carrying out provisions of the Act, as of March 2012.

There were numerous instances in which the ministry released grants in excess of demand and in breach of its own rules, it said. The ministry relaxed norms and released Rs 1,960.45 crore to the states in March 2011, thus contravening norms of financial accountability. An amount of Rs 4,072.99 crore was released for use in the subsequent financial year, in contravention of the budgetary provisions and general financial rules. 

SCENE IN PUNJAB, HARYANA

Even seven years after MGNREGA implementation, Punjab and Haryana had not notified schemes and rules under the programme till March 2012

In Punjab, planning was done without taking into consideration the labour budget and cost of works from gram panchayats

Sixty-seven non-permissible works amounting to `1.2 crore were executed, wages were paid with delays up to 790 days and no compensation was given for delayed payments

In Haryana, there have been cases of delay in payments and tampering with muster rolls

Ponds were dug at a cost of `56 lakh without ensuring availability of water

A vigilance inquiry is pending in works amounting to `56.76 crore executed by the forest department in Ambala district