'Situation not as rosy on ground as depicted by Rural Development dept'

new delhi: A parliamentary panel has stated that the situation is not so "rosy" on ground zero as depicted by the government on the implementation of MGNREGA as there are issues like fake job cards and money changing hands for showing an inflated list of beneficiaries.

The report was tabled by the parliamentary standing committee on Rural Development on Wednesday in Lok Sabha. In its response, the Ministry of Rural Development has stated that all complaints received in the ministry are forwarded to the state governments and UTs concerned for taking appropriate action including investigation. The report titled 'Critical Evaluation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act stated that it is a welfare scheme of gargantuan importance in a country where a majority still reside in rural areas. The panel said the scheme acquires paramount importance in terms of monitoring and surveillance "so that even the single penny of taxpayers' account does not get misused through the nexus of unscrupulous and conniving officials of Gram Panchayats."

The 31-member parliamentary panel, with one vacancy, chaired by Shiv Sena MP Prataprao Jadhav has categorically stated in the report that according to the experience of ground reality shared by the members and also by having reality check through interactions with locals during its regular study-visits to different parts of the country that, the situation is not as good as Department of Rural Development claims.

"The situation is not so rosy' as depicted by the Department of Rural Development in reflecting through its data that only 45 number of complaints on irregularities in MGNREGA Scheme and 28 number of complaints under the misuse of funds have been received so far," the report states.

It says this seems to be very far from the reality as "instances are galore of issues of fake job cards, increased number of job cards than the beneficiaries, money changing hands for commission for showing a fake list of beneficiaries and obtaining the total amount by the erring officials at different levels of implementation of the scheme."