Taking note of widespread reports of corruption in the social audit of UPA flagship MGNREGA, the rural development ministry is planning to delink the village sarpanch from the process.
Sources in the rural development ministry said the institution of sarpanch is the only post which gives him the power to execute development projects. If some of them are misusing their powers, it needs correction, they said. A working group on transparency and accountability, headed by social activist and NAC member Aruna Roy, has suggested that a third party, instead of the village sarpanch, conduct social audits of the rural job plan.
“The present system is giving a free hand in empowering corrupt elements leading to large-scale and unchecked corruption, and encouraging the use of force and violence against people’s efforts to monitor implementation,” said Aruna Roy in her report.
Development economist and central employment guarantee council member Jean Dreze too has been asking the government to address the bottlenecks in the conduct of social audit.
Though there have been reports of social audit not being conducted as per rules from many states, in Rajasthan, the state from where rural development minister C.P. Joshi comes, has recently witnessed public protests regarding conduct of social audits.
Section 17 of the MGNREGA stipulates that the gram sabha shall monitor the execution of works within the gram panchayat, and further that the gram sabha shall conduct regular social audits of all the projects under the scheme taken up within the gram panchayat.
Anomalies of delayed payment, cooperative banks withdrawing NREGA workers money without their approval, forged muster rolls, non issuance of job cards and non-completion of works have come to the fore.