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Gujarat,Tamil Nadu making progress in NREGA audit: Govt

Narendra Modi-ruled Gujarat and Jayalalithaa's Tamil Nadu have made much progress on the social auditing of MNREGA while Rajasthan, where the Congress is in power, is a laggard.

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Narendra Modi-ruled Gujarat and Jayalalithaa's Tamil Nadu have made much progress on the social auditing of MNREGA while Rajasthan, where the Congress is in power, is a laggard.

However, Congress-ruled Andhra Pradesh has emerged as the leader in social audit movement, according to an assessment on social audit in MNREGA by states chaired by Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh.

Another party-ruled state Maharashtra, where MNREGA is not implemented by the Rural Development Department, should resolve "structural problem", it said.

"We are insisting that every state have an independent social audit mechanism. We would like every state to set up an independent society for social audit," Ramesh later told reporters on the sidelines of the conference attended by senior bureaucrats of the Union Ministry.

He said that the independent social audit institutions are not set up just for MNREGA, but also for other Rural Development programmes like pension disbursement and PMGSY.

Expressing disappointment at social audit in Rajasthan, Ramesh said the state "once upon a time along with Andhra Pradesh was one of the leaders in social audit".

The Minister said he would ask the state government to examine the situations and he will try "to straighten the things there".

West Bengal has also a long way to go in the implementation, he said, adding, "other states have also picked up.... Tamil Nadu, Gujarat."

Pointing out the "structural problem" in Maharashtra, Ramesh said, "The rural development department and Panchayati Raj Department are not responsible for the implementation of MNREGA in Maharashtra. That is a problem and that has to be resolved by the state government."

Ramesh had asked Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan to give the responsibility of implementing MNREGA to RuraL Development Department instead of Water Conservation and Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) department.

"Very systematic," the officials commented about the work on social audit by Gujarat through an "interim set up" during the state's presentation at the workshop.

Later, talking to reporters, Ramesh said an NGO has entered into a collaboration with the Gujarat Government for strategic capacity building interventions to make MNREGA implementation effective.

He, however, asked the state to convert the "interim set up" into "an independent society" as argued by social activist Nikhil Dey during Gujarat's presentation at the workshop.

Describing Andhra Pradesh as the leader in social audit on MNREGA, Ramesh said all states should learn from the southern state's experiments.

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