The Ministry of Rural Development on Friday said that 99.67 per cent of active workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) have been Aadhaar-seeded. The Ministry stated that Aadhaar-based e-KYC will now be used to strengthen transparency, accuracy and service delivery in job card verification and renewal.
MGNREGA currently covers 2.69 lakh gram panchayats with more than 26 crore registered workers. Under Schedule II of the Act, job cards are required to be issued within 15 days of application and must include a unique job card number, insurance details and Aadhaar numbers, where available. Job card verification is an ongoing process, while renewals are to be undertaken every five years by State Governments through Panchayati Raj Institutions.
To support these statutory requirements, States and Union Territories have been advised to utilise the e-KYC feature available in the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app for verification and renewal. During the process, an MGNREGA functionary captures the photograph of a worker through the app, which is automatically matched with the worker’s Aadhaar details in real time. The Ministry noted that the verification for each worker can be completed in under a minute.
As of now, more than 56 per cent of active workers have completed e-KYC. States have been asked to minimise operational challenges such as connectivity issues and to conduct verification at worksites or through special gram panchayat camps for greater convenience.
The Ministry said the measure aims to ensure smooth implementation and uninterrupted wage payments to all genuine workers. Training and orientation have already been conducted for field-level functionaries.
On the issue of deletion of job cards, the Ministry informed that a Standard Operating Procedure was issued on 24 January 2025 to provide uniform guidelines to States. The SOP includes safeguards to prevent wrongful deletions, and the Ministry is monitoring compliance while States remain responsible for its enforcement.