MNREGA: Wage payment under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme i.e. MNREGA will now be made only through Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS). Sources gave this information on Monday. The last extension of the deadline for state governments to make payments through the system mandatory ended on December 31.
Payment will be made through ABPS only
Sources said states have been informed that payments will now be made only through ABPS. He said that if any state has any complaint, it will be resolved on a case-by-case basis. The 12 digit Aadhaar number is used as the financial address of the ABPS worker. For ABPS-enabled payments, a worker’s Aadhaar details are linked to his job card and Aadhaar is linked to the worker’s bank account.
About 14.28 crore active workers under MNREGA
According to the Aadhaar Demographic Verification Status Report on the website of the Union Rural Development Ministry, there are about 14.28 crore active workers under MNREGA as of January 1. So far, Aadhar numbers of 13.48 crore workers have been linked. Aadhaar verification of 12.90 crore workers has been done, about 12.49 crore workers have been converted to Aadhaar-based payment system.
This means that about 12.5 per cent of the active workers under MNREGA are still not ABPS enabled. When it comes to total workers, as per January 1 data, there are around 25.89 crore workers under MNREGA, of which 17.37 crore are in ABPS. This means that more than 32 percent workers are not eligible for ABPS.
Congress surrounded the central government
Congress on Monday cornered the Central Government on making Aadhaar based system mandatory for MNREGA payments. Said – Modi government should stop weaponizing technology, especially Aadhaar, to deprive the most vulnerable Indians of their social welfare benefits.
Party general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that by using ABPS for MNREGA wage payments, the Modi government has continued its destructive experiment with technology. He alleged that this is a dangerous New Year gift from the Prime Minister to deprive crores of extremely poor and marginalized Indians of earning a basic income.
