New Delhi, Nov 17 (PTI) Around 27 lakh MGNREGS workers were deleted across India between October 10 and November 14, a report said, flagging the large volume as "highly unusual".

According to a report by Lib Tech India, a consortium of academicians and activists, around 10.5 lakh workers were added to the flagship rural livelihood scheme during the same period of time.

The report pointed out that the spike overlapped with the period when e-KYC became mandatory under the scheme from November 1, 2025, and the surge in deletions appeared in the same period.

"Such a large volume of deletions concentrated in one month is highly unusual," the six-monthly report on the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, said.

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), better known as MGNREGA or NREGA, is a flagship scheme aimed at enhancing livelihood security of households in rural areas of the country by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

According to the report, the national trend showed net additions for the first six months between April and September of the financial year 2025-26.

Around 15.2 lakh workers were deleted in this period and 98.8 lakh workers were added, making the total additions to 83.6 lakh.

Net additions stood at around 83.6 lakh workers by the end of September, but they fell sharply to 66.5 lakh by November 14 after the deletion spike, it said.

The year-long trend was reversed in this one month.

"This means the system effectively lost around 17 lakh net workers in one month, a dramatic reversal of the previous trend," the report said.

The report also pointed out that there is also a decrease of about six lakh active workers -- those who actually obtained employment under MGNREGA for at least a day in the last three years.

"This indicates that even workers who are currently participating in the programme are getting affected," the report said.

According to the Rural Development Ministry, e-KYC, or electronic-Know Your Customer, has been made mandatory for all active MGNREGS workers to weed out ineligible or fake beneficiaries.

The report also pointed out that the surge in MGNREGS job cards deletion was witnessed when the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) was enforced.

MGNREGA job cards entailing over 5.48 crore workers were deleted in 2022-23, a jump of 267 per cent compared to 2022-21, when job cards involving 1,49,31,801 workers were deleted, according to a written reply by the Rural Development Ministry in Lok Sabha in December 2023. ABPS was first introduced in the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA as an optional payment method in 2016 and was made mandatory on January 1, 2024.

The Lib Tech India report also said that while the data do not show a uniform pattern across all states, a "clear and worrying trend" emerges when the states with the highest e-KYC completion are focused on.

The top three states in e-KYC completion are Andhra Pradesh, with 78.4 per cent e-KYC and 15,92,903 deletions; Tamil Nadu, with 67.6 per cent e-KYC and 30,529 deletions; and Chhattisgarh, which has 66.6 per cent e-KYC and 1,04,310 deletions, it said.

While the Rural Development Ministry did comment on the report, a senior official said the e-KYC cannot be linked with card deletions and job cards cannot be deleted on the basis that the worker is not eligible for APBS or e-KYC. The official added that deletion of job cards is a regular exercise undertaken by the states and Union Territories (UTs).

Under ABPS,  Aadhaar details of a worker are seeded with their job card and bank account. It also has to be mapped with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) database, and the concerned bank's institutional identification number (IIN) should also be mapped with the NPCI database.

According to data on the Rural Development Ministry's website, e-KYC has been done for around 39.81 per cent of the total workers under MGNREGS so far, and 55.01 per cent of the active workers.

According to government data, there are 27,64,56,185 workers under MGNREGS and Aadhaar seeding has been done for 22,94,69,620 workers. The total number of active workers is 12,17,48,395, and Aadhaar seeding has been done for 12,13,41,804 workers. PTI AO AO KSS KSS