The Ministry of Rural Development on Sunday said it has been noticed by the Ministry that some section of the media has quoted that “Rural Employment under MGNREGS dip by 16 per cent in the first half of the current year.’

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (Mahatma Gandhi NREGA) aims at enhancing livelihood security of households in rural areas of the country by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

“It may be noted that the total person days generated between FY 2006-07 to FY 2013-14 were 1660 crore, whereas, the total person days between FY 2014-15 to FY 2024-25 has been 2923 crore. Since MGNREGA is a demand driven scheme and current FY is still ongoing, hence, it is not possible to fix an exact target of person days generation. However, the states/UTs can send proposal for labour budget revision as per the local felt needs,” the Ministry said.

Under Mahatma Gandhi NREGA Direct Benefit Transfer, all payments to the workers are to be credited into the accounts of the workers. The crediting of payments are done using the Aadhaar number of the beneficiary with which the account is linked.

ABPS conversion is a major reform process where benefits are credited directly into the bank accounts based on the Aadhaar of the workers under Mahatma Gandhi NREGS, preferably Aadhaar Based Payments, cutting several layers in the delivery process.

APBS helps in better targeting, increasing the efficiency of the system and reducing the delays in payments, ensuring greater inclusion by curbing leakages and thereby, controlling expenditure and promoting greater accountability and transparency.

The major benefit of ABPS conversion in Mahatma Gandhi NREGA is to minimise the rejection of transactions due to the frequent changing of accounts. Still, it also helps to maximize the performance of DBT.

“As on October 26, Aadhar seeding has been done for 13.10 crore active workers, which is 99.3 per cent of total active workers (13.18 crore),” the Ministry said.

“It is a fallacious argument that workers’ demand for work is not registered if their accounts are not ABPS-enabled and that their wages remain unpaid because of this reason. In case of non-eligible workers, whose ABPS is still pending, states/UTs have been requested to sensitize all banks to ensure timely seeding of Aadhaar numbers of NREGS beneficiaries into NPCI mapper,” it said.

“In this regard, it is also informed that if any transaction returns from NPCI/Bank with any valid reason for rejection under ABPS then that transaction can be regenerated from NACH (National Automated Clearing House) payment mode. Therefore, there already exists an alternative solution at NREGASoft in the form of NACH Payment mode (i.e. Account Based) for the regeneration of failed transactions under ABPS. States/UTs have been continuously sensitized regarding this,” the Ministry further said.

It is an inaccurate assessment to state that the budget of MGNREGA and workers’ wages are being cut continuously. The Budget estimate for the scheme has been on an increasing trend.

“During the FY 2013-14, the Budget allocation was Rs 33,000 crore only at BE stage which is Rs 86,000 crore during the current FY 2024-25, which is the highest since inception. Further, it is stated that in FY 2024-25 the minimum average notified wage rate has increased by 7 per cent,” the Ministry said.