Only 54% MGNREGA bank accounts in Karnataka seeded with Aadhaar

Only 54 per cent of bank accounts belonging to workers of the rural employment guarantee scheme have been seeded with Aadhaar, leaving a large number of payments that are possibly going to unauthenticated financial addresses.

According to government data, there are 78.91 lakh bank accounts of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) workers in Karnataka. Of this, 42.73 lakh, or 54.15 per cent, are seeded with Aadhaar. For them, wages are credited only to their bank accounts that are linked with Aadhaar, known as the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS).

The remaining 36.17 lakh workers are receiving wages in their bank accounts. But, there is no way of being sure that these bank accounts belong to the workers as they are not seeded with Aadhaar.

The government is doubling down on the AePS because it will ensure money reaches the right bank account. In August 2018, the government made Aadhaar the basis for all beneficiary payments.

“We have 96 per cent of MGNREGA job cards seeded with Aadhaar, but seeding bank accounts is getting delayed,” Rural Development & Panchayat Raj (RDPR) principal secretary L K Atheeq said.

“There is some amount of paperwork involved. There’s a consent letter that the workers need to sign. These letters then go all the way to the National Payments Corporation of India. Once both job cards and bank accounts are linked with Aadhaar, then the AePS will happen,” he explained.

According to Atheeq, non-seeding of Aadhaar with workers’ bank accounts did not deprive them of wages. “AePS is desirable because it perhaps reduces the rate of rejection in the transactions,” he said. “There’s a small percentage of transactions that get rejected often due to mismatch in phone numbers or if the phone number is associated with a different Aadhaar,” he said. Whenever a transaction is rejected, Atheeq said the Fund Transfer Order is regenerated.

Apparently, banks are delaying the Aadhaar seeding. “It needs cooperation from the banks,” Atheeq said.

There are seven districts where less than 50 per cent of the MGNREGA bank accounts are Aadhaar-seeded: Kolar, Bagalkot, Bengaluru Urban, Vijayapura, Bidar, Kalaburagi and Yadgir.

Under MGNREGA, semi-skilled and unskilled workers are paid Rs 289 per day for a minimum 100 days of work in a year.

Aadhaar-seeding is better when it comes to Jan Dhan accounts: 81 per cent of the 1.81 crore accounts have been seeded. Similarly, 87 per cent of all operative CASA (current account savings account) accounts in the state are Aadhaar-seeded.