To plug leakages, MGNREGS assets to be geo-tagged

AGRA: In a bid to check leakages and bring more transparency, the government will geotag assets created under MGNREGS. The project, to be implemented via Isro's geo-portal Bhuvan, will be run in seven districts of Uttar Pradesh and 93 other districts across the country beginning September 1.

The move comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a review meeting recently underlined the need for online recording and monitoring of assets to check leakages and for mapping of resources and their location details for future development works. There were reports that only 28% of the payments were made on time to workers in 2014-2015.

Every year government allocates Rs 30,000-40,000 crore to MGNREGS to sponsor various works related to natural resource management like water conservation, land development, irrigation, etc. Besides these, dams, irrigational channels, check dams, wells and anganwadi assets are also constructed under this scheme.

Geotagging of assets will capture latitude and longitude of the works done under the scheme, for which the rural development ministry had signed an MoU with Isro on June 24 this year.

"A picture of the spot where an asset is created will be uploaded by a junior engineer on geo-portal Bhuvan through a mobile application. The app will facilitate geo-tagging of the uploaded photograph in latitude and longitude," Agra chief development officer Nagendra Pratap said.

Agra's deputy commissioner for NREGS Bhupendra Kumar Singh said, "A state-level meeting-cumtraining session of village officials on geo-tagging is going to take place in Lucknow this month." Besides Agra, six other districts where geotagging will begin in the first phase are Sant Kabir Nagar, Mahoba, Saharanpur, Jhansi, Varanasi and Barabanki.