Nearly 2.7 million workers’ names were removed from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) database between October 10 and November 14, significantly outpacing the 1.05 million additions made during the same time. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh characterized this as a “systematic attempt to deny India’s rural poor their legislative right to employment.”
The spike in deletions coincides with the Union government’s enforcement of mandatory electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC), an Aadhaar-based verification process designed to eliminate ineligible beneficiaries. According to Lib Tech India, a consortium that monitors public service delivery, the deletions in the previous six months totaled around 1.5 million, but surged to 2.7 million within just one month.
During the initial half of the 2025–26 fiscal year, MGNREGA reported a net addition of 8.36 million workers, encompassing 9.88 million new registrations and 1.52 million deletions. By mid-November, the net additions had decreased to 6.65 million, effectively eliminating 1.7 million workers in just one month. Lib Tech also noted that 600,000 of those deleted were active workers, having worked at least one day in the past three years.
States with higher e-KYC completion rates witnessed the largest deletions. In Andhra Pradesh, where 78.4% of workers had completed e-KYC, 1.592 million were deleted. Tamil Nadu (67.6%) reported 30,529 deletions, while Chhattisgarh (66.6%) saw approximately 104,000 deletions.
Officials from the Union Ministry of Rural Development denied any correlation between the deletions and the e-KYC drive, asserting that job-card verification is a continuous process conducted by state governments and gram panchayats, with job cards needing renewal every five years, a cycle currently in progress. A top official noted that Standard Operating Procedures require that job cards marked for deletion be publicly posted, allowing time for appeals before receiving final approval from the gram sabha.
The e-KYC process mandates that MGNREGA mates photograph each worker and upload these images to the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS), which matches the photographs with Aadhaar records. The Ministry stated that the system was enhanced after identifying widespread misuse, such as unrelated or recycled photographs, and inconsistencies in worker counts and gender composition at worksites.
Since early 2023, the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) has been mandatory, linking payments directly to workers’ Aadhaar details. This system is designed to prevent duplicate and ghost job cards but has also led to the exclusion of many legitimate workers. Chakradhar Buddha, a senior researcher at Lib Tech, remarked that the pattern of mass deletions mirrors the rollout of ABPS, which saw a 247% increase in deletions between 2021–22 and 2022–23.
Buddha emphasized that each time a new Aadhaar-linked technology is introduced—whether ABPS or e-KYC—the intention to enhance verification often leads to new barriers for genuine workers, resulting in large-scale exclusions. Sobhana K. Nair, a Senior Deputy Editor at The Hindu, pointed out that the Ministry’s claim of no correlation between the deletions and the e-KYC drive contradicts the impetus behind the e-KYC, linked to issues in the digital attendance system.
Jairam Ramesh criticized the Ministry’s actions, stating it constitutes “another day, another attempt to deny India’s rural poor their legislative right to employment.” He indicated that the mass deletions align with the e-KYC rollout and claimed this was part of a broader effort to undermine MGNREGA by employing Aadhaar-based digital processes under the guise of transparency.
The Congress party is calling for a substantial increase in the MGNREGA budget, strict enforcement of timely wage payments, a minimum daily wage of ₹400 to bolster real income growth, the establishment of a Standing Committee to determine future wage rates, and an immediate cessation of the mandatory use of exclusionary technologies, including ABPS, NMMS, and e-KYC.
Lib Tech is a collective motivated by India’s Right to Information movement, aiming to enhance transparency and accountability in public services.
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