Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Status of NREGS

RTI exposes poor implementation of NREGS Vishnu Rajgadia Jharkhand was a fortunate state as it had got lions share in NREGS. Initially, 200 districts of the country were selected for the scheme. 20 districts of the Jharkhand were among the list out of them total 22 districts of the state. But the implementation of NREGS was very poor. On August 23rd of 2006, Vishnu Rajgadia filed a RTI application to provide details of the implementation of NREGS in each block. Denied for the information, he moved to State Information Commission. During the hearing, the PIO of Rural Development informed the commission that a request for information was sent to the Deputy Commissioners of 20 districts, but nobody provided the same. The commission felt that the implementing authorities itself lacking the information on block level regarding NREGS. Therefore, the commission summoned the 20 Deputy Commissioners to state whether they have the block level information on NREGS or not. The commission also wanted to know from the Principal Secretary of the Rural Development Department whether he gets the reports on implementations of NREGS in blocks or not. on 04.01.2007, for the first time in country, 21 IAS officers were summoned before a Information Commission. Some of them were present in person. The Principal Secretary of Rural Development had also appeared before the commission. Information provided were enough to disclose the poor implementation of NREGS.

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