MGNREGS beats PAHAL as top saver for government via DBT

NEW DELHI: The Centre's flagship rural jobs programme has edged out the scheme providing subsidy on cooking gas cylinders in helping the government save the most in a financial year by better targeting of beneficiaries.

The government has released data showing it saved Rs 8,741 crore in 2016-17 by weeding out nearly one crore fake beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme ( MGNREGS), launched by its predecessor UPA, by using Aadhaar and direct benefit transfer (DBT). This is higher than Rs 8,185 crore saved on PAHAL scheme for DBT of LPG subsidy, which accounted for the highest saving through DBT in previous years.

In all, the government said it saved Rs 20,000 crore through DBT in various schemes last fiscal and revised its cumulative savings since it took office in May 2014 to Rs 57,029 crore.

A senior government official said that record Aadhaar seeding done in MGNREGS accounts in the last fiscal led to scrapping of nearly one crore job cards, bringing down the total number of job cards under the scheme to 12 crore. This was done after a massive exercise over the past one year revealed several cases of misappropriation and deceased persons still enrolled in the scheme.

"It is ironical that a UPA subsidy scheme is bringing the maximum savings for government. We have seeded 85% of MGNREGS accounts with Aadhaar," said the official.