Even as the Madhya Pradesh Government pats itself on the back for its implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Delhi-based Centre for Environment and Food Security (CEFS) on Thursday alleged that a major chunk of the money was siphoned off by those in charge of disbursement. The CEFS disclosure came out after a study conducted over two months in 125 villages spread over five MP districts.

CEFS director Parshuram Rai claimed officials submitted inflated estimates and used heavy machines like JCBs and dumpers to carry out the works. The money was pocketed by creating fake job cards and bogus entries in muster rolls, the NGO alleged in its report released to the media.

According to the NREGA website, the state was given Rs 3,288 crore and was able to spend Rs 2,891 crore during 2007-08. In other words, 43,46,916 households in MP were given 63 days of average employment during that period, Rai said.

The CEFS survey, however, found that the households got only 10.61 days of average employment during the period of the study and just 2.36 per cent of the households got 100 days of wage employment, which is the scheme’s basic objective. Rai alleged that 65.39 per cent of the households did not receive a single day of employment.

CEFS alleged that as much as three-fourth of the job figures were based on fake entries, adding that if the samples were extended to the entire state a whopping amount of Rs 2,100 crore was siphoned off and misappropriated by executing officials of the implementing agencies.

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