NEW DELHI: More than five crore job cards under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) were cancelled in 2022-23, 247 per cent more than the number of deletions in 2021-22, the Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday.
In a written reply, Rural Development Minister Giriraj Singh said that in 2021-22, MGNREGA job cards of 1,49,51,247 workers were deleted while in 2022-23 the number was 5,18,91,168.
West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were among the states which saw the highest number of deletions.
In 2021-22, as many as 1,57,309 job cards were deleted in West Bengal, while in the following fiscal, the number shot up by over 5,000 per cent to 83,36,115.
In Andhra Pradesh, 6,25,514 job cards were deleted in 2021-22, which increased by 1,147 per cent in 2022-23, when 78,05,569 job cards were cancelled.
Similarly, in Telangana, 61,278 job cards were deleted in 2021-22, while 17,32,936 cards were deleted in 2022-23, an increase of 2,727 per cent.
Gujarat deleted 1,43,202 workers' job cards in 2021-22 and 4,30,404 in 2022-23, a jump of over 200 per cent.
In his reply, Singh said the deletions were made due to reasons such as "fake" job cards, duplicate job cards, people not willing to work anymore, family shifted from Gram Panchayat permanently, or deaths.
In reply to another question, Singh said 2.95 crore people in the age group of 18-30 years were registered under the scheme up to the 2020-21 financial year which was increased to 3.06 crore up to financial year 2022-23.
In 2022-23, 57.43 per cent of MGNREGA workers were women.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is aimed at enhancing livelihood security by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
