Centre reducing MGNREGA expenditure, claims Jairam Ramesh

New Delhi [India], December 4 : Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday alleged that the BJP-led central government was reducing its expenses under the MGNREGA scheme.
Taking to Twitter, Ramesh, the general secretary (Communications) of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), wrote, "Payments worth Rs 8,450 crore (under MNREGA) were delayed in this financial year, including for the entire state of West Bengal."
"Modi govt's latest assault on the poor is a backdoor move to reduce expenditure on MGNREGA. Forcing MGNREGA workers to register their attendance via an app will introduce new avenues of corruption, and disempower women, Dalits and Adivasis," he further tweeted.
Ramesh claimed, "This move appears to increase transparency, (but) will have the exact opposite effect."
The Congress leader said the Centre's move will 'disempower' women and people from the marginalised sections who do not own 'expensive smartphones'.
Ramesh claimed the Centre has now mandated that there has to be someone to record and physcally verify the attedance of a worker involved in a MGNREGA project. "Earlier, the physical muster rolls available took signatures of the employees and were subject to social audit," Ramesh tweeted.
He also flagged the lack of a 'measurement of work done' feature in the National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) application, which undermines transparency. The app was launched by the Union Rural Development ministry in 2021 to ensure proper monitoring of rural projects.
Ramesh claimed the new app denies work or payment to the workers when the 'server is down', calling it 'unfit for the purpose'.
Demanding "compensation to workers who've lost their wages through technical glitches of the app", the Congress leader also called for "transparency and accountability through muster rolls and social audits".