Nearly 27 lakh workers were removed from the database of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme between October 10 and November 14, far more than the 10.5 lakh new names added in the same period, The Hindu quoted an analysis by a non-profit research organisation as saying.

The surge in deletions coincides with the Union government’s push to conduct online Know Your Customer or e-KYC verification, the newspaper reported.

The e-KYC process requires supervisors to click photographs of each of the workers and upload them on MGNREGS’ digital attendance application, the National Mobile Monitoring System to match them with their Aadhaar data.

The government introduced e-KYC after finding the digital attendance system was being “misused”.

Lib Tech, a consortium of activists and academicians found that deletions in the past six months totalled about 15 lakh but in just one month, they jumped to 27 lakh.

This jump coincided with a drop in net additions to the scheme.

In the first six months of financial year 2025-’26, there were 83.6 lakh net additions to the scheme, as as 98.8 lakh workers were added, against 15.2 lakh deletions, The Hindu reported. By mid-November, however, net additions had fallen to 66.5 lakh.

The analysis also noted that 6 lakh of these beneficiaries were active workers, defined as those who have worked at least one day in the past three years, the newspaper reported.

States with high e-KYC completion rates saw the most deletions. In Andhra Pradesh, where 78.4% of workers have completed e-KYC, there were 15.92 lakh deletions. Tamil Nadu (67.6%) saw 30,529 deletions, and Chhattisgarh (66.6%) reported 1.04 lakh, the newspaper reported.

An unidentified official from the Union Ministry of Rural Development was quoted as saying by The Hindu that job cards must be renewed every five years, and that deletions follow a Standard Operating Procedure, which entails public disclosure, time for appeals and gram sabha approval.

Also read: NREGA attendance app claims to increase transparency. But the pictures tell a different story

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