Government to geotag all assets as inventory created under MGNREGA after allocating Rs 40,000 crore every year

NEW DELHI: In a bid to check leakages and bring more transparency, government has initiated geotagging of all assets created under the rural employment programme MGNREGA.

Every year the government allocates Rs 30000-40000 crore to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to sponsor various works for creation of wages, employment and productive assets, Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told reporters here.

"The move comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a review meeting recently had underlined the need for online recording and monitoring of assets to check leakages and for effective mapping of resources and their location details for future development works," Tomar added.

Geotagging of assets will capture latitude and longitude of the asset. And for this Rural Development Ministry has signed MoU with ISRO on June 24 this year, Secretary Rural Development Amarjeet Sinha said.

Geo-tagged assets will not only ease identification and monitoring; it can also be implemented to perform additional developmental works on existing assets, Sinha added.

Assets created under MGNREGA include works related to natural resource management that include water conservation, land development, irrigation, etc.

Besides these, dams, irrigational channels, check dams, ponds, wells anaganwadi assets were also constructed under this scheme.