They died the day before.

The day he got the card, his daughter-in-law Phulkumari too died.

In just two days, the landless Dalit labourer saw three members of the family die. “They were sick and weak. There was nothing to eat in the house for the last three days. There is no work and so no money to buy food,” he said.

Though Sherghati SDO Durgesh Nandan said that these were not hunger deaths and Tulsi’s wife was suffering from TB and daughter-in-law from jaundice, District Magistrate Jitendra Srivastava admitted there have been administrative lapses.

“The mukhiya and the panchayat sewak have been served show-cause notice why job cards were delayed and why no work was done under the Employment Guarantee Scheme,” Srivastava told The Indian Express.

He said he could not yet establish if the deaths were caused by starvation but admitted that the Bhuyian family was “very very poor” and “there may be an element of truth in the allegations”.

No one denies Tulsi Bhuyian’s claim that there was no work, and no food. When officials reached the house after the deaths, they did not find any foodgrain.

Not just him, but six other musahar families of Banwara too had very little to eat. They were given rice and flour by government officials. There was hardly any work available for the last couple of months for 40 families of landless labourers in this village. The NREGS, launched in February, remains a virtual non-starter. The SDO too admitted that there was very little work and too much of poverty.

Job cards to 28 villagers were delivered on October 6, though they had applied a couple of months ago. On some of the job cards, the entries were back-dated.

In May, there was work to strengthen a canal under the food-for-work programme. The job card showed each of them received 5 kg of rice worth Rs 32.25 and cash of Rs 35.75. It adds to Rs 68 as stipulated under the NREGS. “But we received no foodgrain. We got only cash which varied from Rs 20-25 each day. The Mukhiya said that it was according to the measurement of the soil they had dug”, said Tulsi .

Apart from this single work, nothing under the EGS has been carried out. Officials said most of the work under EGS is “kachcha” (mud work) and it remains suspended in June-October due to the rainy season.

Ashok Singh, the mukhiya, first admitted that the canal work was done under the NREGS. Then he denied it. “It must be some other government scheme,” he said. He said labourers were needed for a repairing a village road but none from Banwara were coming despite notices. “Now I will move to cancel their job cards. They want free foodgrain,” he said.

Even as he was talking, a group of labourers from Banwara and other villages came at his house and said they had gone to work but found nobody.