Government accountability hits rock bottom in NREGA

JAIPUR: Having set an example to the nation of bringing transparency and accountability in schemes under the MGNREGA, Rajasthan is fast finding itself loosing all grounds in this count.
Not only social audits but also other instruments for ensuring transparency are a thing of past but there has been little effort by it in prosecuting those whom it had found responsible for financial irregularities in NREGA.
In what was the first of it kind effort in the country in October 2009, social audit was carried out in Bhilwara. About 1,500 persons carried out audits of all schemes under NREGA in 282 panchayats in the district and detected anomalies amounting to Rs 2 crore but since then little ac tion seems to have been taken against the guilty.
Since then the Bhilwara pattern social audit got in legal wrangles and state government devised a new pattern of auditing.