Central teams to inspect MNREGA work in Chhattisgarh

After Telangana, Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh is under the Centre's scanner for financial and schematic irregularities in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA).

The ministry of rural development will send central teams to Chhattisgarh to examine irregularities in the implementation, estimation, execution and payment to workers under MNREGA in the Congress-ruled state. The state came under the rural development ministry's scanner in January as part of a national exercise to monitor high-expenditure administrative blocks.

In the first round, central teams visited 90 districts with four high-expenditure blocks each. It included two districts (eight blocks) of Chhattisgarh -- Kabirdham and Rajnandgaon. The second round of monitoring included five districts of Chhattisgarh with three blocks each -- Baloda Bazaar, Bilaspur, Dhamtari, Mahasamund and Raigarh.


Rural development secretary Nagendra Nath Sinha confirmed to ET that the feedback from these visits formed the basis for the central teams undertaking further monitoring visits.

The monitoring of MNREGA works in Chhattisgarh follows a similar exercise in Telangana where the rural development ministry found irregularities and recommended the Telangana Rashtra Samithi-led government to initiate administrative and criminal proceedings against errant officials and contractors and recover irregularly spent money.