To keep control over its flagship scheme ~ the much-hyped Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) ~ and to defeat its non-Congress regimes in various states, the Centre has given itself powers to check releasing funds due to ineffective implementation.   In a six-point instruction to states, the ministry of rural development has said that audit teams and media reports have revealed “anomalies” in the implementation of the MGNREGA. “If the...

Even as the Supreme Court has warned of a CBI inquiry into diversion of MGNREGS funds, the Centre has told the States that it will have the complaints investigated by the agency and funds will be withheld if its directives for corrective measures are ignored. The Rural Development Ministry, in its circular to the State governments, underlined its resolve to order a probe into complaints received from independent sources. It will...

Bharatiya Janata Party MLC Vinod Tawde on Thursday demanded a probe by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) into an alleged scam in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Maharashtra. According to him, hundreds of crores of funds meant for NREGA wages were being pocketed by officials. “In Jawahar and Mokhada areas in Thane, one MGNREGS site reported that wages were paid to workers. But the list included a...

Training its guns on the state government over the mismanagement of schemes that are being run to provide employment to the poor, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday alleged that officials were siphoning of crores of rupees which should have been be distributed to the poor as remuneration in the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS). “There is a multi-crore scam in the EGS scheme. There needs to be CID inquiry to...

Corruption in implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in UP may be another point of tussle between the state and Central governments, already at loggerheads over various issues. After getting no exact response from the state government over repeated queries regarding the action taken against officials, responsible for financial irregularities committed in the implementation of the scheme, the Centre has warned of seeking help of the...