NEW DELHI: While there is provision for social audit of central schemes like MGNREGS, a few of them have been audited in the last few years. A parliamentary panel has taken strong note of this, saying only 29,611 gram panchayats were audited in the 2020-21 fiscal and it came down in 2021-22 with only 18,589 gram panchayats being audited so far out of total 2,68,981.
"Despite the provision and rules, the committee find to its utter dismay that the actual implementation of this provision is poor, and abysmally low figures of audit of gram panchayats come before the committee," said the panel in its report tabled recently in Parliament.
The report observed a very poor adherence to such an important mechanism of accounting of gram panchayats. "The committee take a very strong view of this negligent and non-serious approach elicited by the agencies concerned and vehemently urge the Department of Rural Development to take up this matter in all earnest with a firm resolve and ensure that the gram panchayats do not go unaudited during the financial year," it said.
As per the rule, the gram sabha shall monitor the execution of works within the gram panchayat. The gram sabha shall conduct regular social audits of all the projects under the MGNREGS taken up within the gram panchayat.
Till November 2021, a total of 27 States and 1 UT (Jammu & Kashmir) have established Social Audit Unit (SAU) and are conducting audit which is to be conducted for all the works taken up under the MGNREGS at least once in six months.
The other aspect concerning with social audits that bewildered the committee was the absence of social audit reports for public. The committee "could not fathom the logic" behind non-publication of social audit reports so far.
MGNREGS runs on a huge budget and accounting of every penny spent under the scheme needs to be mandatorily brought to fore in public domain, it said.