Red-faced over its MGNREGA reply, govt orders probe

The Bihar government on Wednesday ordered an inquiry after it was left red-faced over a reply on job creation under MGNREGA it shared in the state assembly after leader of the opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav trashed the figures as “misleading” and contrary to the data in the national portal of the centrally sponsored rural employment scheme.

PATNA The Bihar government on Wednesday ordered an inquiry after it was left red-faced over a reply on job creation under MGNREGA it shared in the state assembly after leader of the opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav trashed the figures as “misleading” and contrary to the data in the national portal of the centrally sponsored rural employment scheme.

RJD leaderTejashwi Yadav on his way to the Bihar assembly on Wednesday. (Santosh Kumar/HT Photo)

“ We will enquire into the matter and take action against officials if they are found to have given wrong answers for government reply on jobs created under MGNREGA in the current fiscal,” said rural development minister Shravan Kumar.

The minister’s assurance came after Tejashwi challenged his reply that the government had provided jobs to 61 lakh out of 62 lakh applicants under the scheme in this current fiscal.

“ The government is claiming it has provided work to 99.91% of job applicants. This is completely wrong. The national portal of MGNREGA, which updates data on real-time basis, shows a different story,” Tejashwi said, displaying data sheets uploaded from the portal.

The RJD leader said the national portal showed that 1.53 crore job cardholders had sought work in the year 2021-22 whereas state government is claiming that only 62 lakh people had sought work.