Rattled by an NGO’s survey claiming to have found that funds as high as nearly `6,000 crore were swindled in MNREGS in Bihar in the past six years, the state government has initiated a probe into the allegations through the district magistrates in the 10 districts under survey.
The Nitish Kumar-led government, which has frequently faced charges of massive corruption in MNREGS ever since it came to power in 2005, has not issued any rebuttal of the claims of the Delhi-based NGO, Centre for Environment and Food Security (CEFS), that nearly 73 per cent of the funds allotted to Bihar for the MNREGS between 2006 and 2012 were misappropriated by the authorities.
The survey’s findings have put Bihar’s JD(U)-BJP government in a highly embarrassing situation at a time when chief minister Nitish Kumar’s governance model has attracted attention and admiration from near and far. Kumar had on Monday depicted his coalition government as a supreme example of probity and transparency.
Alleging “an open loot of taxpayers’ money” in implementation of the MNREGS, the CEFS said about 73 per cent of the `8,189 crore shown to have been spent in Bihar between 2006 and 2012 never reached the beneficiaries.
“We have asked the district magistrates of the 10 districts (which figured in the CEFS survey) to probe the NGO’s findings and come up with a report to be discussed at a meeting of the deputy development commissioners on November 30,” said Bihar’s rural development minister Nitish Mishra.
In February, then Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh had said Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had himself told him about the misuse of MNREGS funds by representatives of Panchayati Raj institutions such as mukhiyas. “He (Kumar) had himself told me about how vehicles like Bolero were being purchased with this money (MNREGS). He told me during today’s meeting that the volume of such purchases had come down in the past few months,” Mr Ramesh had told journalists.