Congress leader Sanjay Dixit alleged a scam of over Rs 500 crore in Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) under the Union Ministry of Rural Development and demanded an inquiry by the CBI. He claimed that even after full information, the department concerned made huge payments for the work in which the agencies not engaged even a single unskilled or skilled labour but completed over 5,000 permanent projects spread in 65 districts of UP.
Interestingly, the Congress leader provided documents in which he shown bungling under MNREGA in Rae Bareli (represented in Parliament by Congress president Sonia Gandhi who is also chairperson of the UPA), Amethi (parliamentary constituency of Rahul Gandhi), Jhansi (represented by Pradeep Jain Aditya who is also Minister of State in the Rural Development Ministry), and lucknow (State capital where Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and other senior officers including local Rural Development Ministry directly supervise each and every project).
Dixit, who failed to continue as a member of Monitoring Committee of MNREGA formed under the Union Ministry called a Press meet on Thursday afternoon and handed over document that how ‘magic’ has been done by the agencies who showed thousands and thousands of projects completed without engaging a single labour. He claimed that just in last about three years, the agencies in connivance with the officials of the Agriculture Department at the Centre siphoned off over Rs 500 crore by showing 5,000 projects completed. He claimed that what is more surprising that the entire operation has been made even when the Ministry of Rural Development has been well informed of the irregularities.
Dixit claimed that Joint Secretary in the RD Ministry DK Jain had also written a letter in this regard to the Principal Secretary of the RD Department here in UP on October 20, 2011 in which he highlighted the above irregularities made in projects for vegetable plantation, boundary wall construction, walls of school playground, kharanja etc which are shown completed without engaging any work force (labourers). Jain directed to make an enquiry and take necessary action. The Congress leader claimed that it is surprising that the officers even dared to make bungling done in Rae Bareli, Amethi, Jhansi and lucknow even after full information to the persons sitting at top in the Ministry.
The leader further targeted his own party’s Minister Jairam Ramesh when he said that the Union Minister and some leading social activists are misguiding the public on the issue of stopping flow of MGNREGA funds where such anomalies have been highlighted. “The Ministry and social activists claimed the funds could not be stopped as in that case the labourer and poor persons would suffer,” cited Dixit claiming that this is completely misleading information as Section 27 (2) of MGNREGA Act clearly made provisions that in such cases, the State Governments were responsible to carry on work on their expenditure and if they failed to do so then they should give unemployment allowance to all the labourers.
Dixit said Ramesh wrote letters to the UP Government in which he demanded CBI probe into the irregularities in UP. Now, he wanted that such irregularities in the Central Departments and that too in full knowledge of the RD Ministry needs no requirement of State Government’s recommendation for a CBI enquiry.