PATNA: Leader of opposition in the state assembly Tejashwi Prasad Yadav on Wednesday exposed the anomalies in the figures related to the work given to persons seeking engagement through schemes under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), alleging that the statistical figures presented in the House by rural development department (RDD) minister Shrawan Kumar were fabricated.
Tejashwi countered the government’s figures presented in the House by the minister and made a detailed presentation on it. He also demanded that the RDD officials concerned should be called and asked to explain the anomalies in the figures, which were glaring.
The minister, in turn, admitted that anomalies appeared to have crept in and that he would look into it and duly update the House.Earlier, through the short-notice question, Tejashwi wanted to know from the minister if the Centre had made 40% deduction in the fund allotted to the state during 2021-22 fiscal for executing schemes under MNREGA and provide work to those workers who demanded it.
He also sought to know if Bihar held the top position among all the states which could not provide work or failed to provide work in the 2021-22 fiscal year to those workers who had demanded it and, therefore, most of them could not be engaged in the schemes under MNREGA.
In response, the minister said as many as 62.09 lakh persons had demanded work. Of them, 61.97 lakh were given work engagements, which came to 99.81%, he added.
For his part, Tejashwi, citing the figures uploaded to the MNREGA website, said of the total 99.64 lakh active workers in the state, only 45.67 lakh had been engaged. Further, of the engaged workers, only 14,14,590 had got work for 100 days.
Overall, the rate of work engagement given per household was 36.65 man-days, he said, adding that 1.53 crore people demanded work during 2021-22 and that he had relevant real-time month-wise data on work done by them for every district in the state.
While Bihar has 3.21 crore workers, only 94.66 lakh of them are active workers, implying that the remaining ones did not get work and also that the state had only 34.2 lakh active job card holders.
Later, talking to media, Tejashwi said the state government was giving fake figures and that, too, in the House.
The MGNREGA website states that in Bihar 1.53 crore applications were received. He wonder how the figure of 62 lakh was provided to the minister.
“It shows that this government is running at God’s mercy. The bureaucrats have the temerity to furnish false reply to the minister to put it in the House,” Tejashwi said.
