The Union government has put on hold till March 31 its decision to pay wages to MGNREGA workers only through Aadhaar-linked bank accounts in an indirect acknowledgement of haste that has adversely affected several people.

The Aadhaar-based payment system (ABPS) now covers only fewer than half of the total workers under the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) scheme. Procedural requirements at banks are standing in the way of the swift linking of the accounts with the Aadhaar cards.

Public policy expert Jean Dreze said the situation was unlikely to change much in a few days.

The decision to make the Aadhaar link compulsory for paying wages under the MGNREGA scheme from February 1 has triggered protests by the workers and prompted questions in Parliament.

Complaints have come from different states about names of workers being dropped from wage advisories prepared by block administrations because such workers did not have ABPS-linked accounts.

Now, the rural development ministry has allowed the wages to be paid as usual also through the banks till the end of this month. In response to questions by Congress MP Kodikunnil Suresh in the Lok Sabha, minister of state for rural development Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti on Tuesday said that the wage payment may be made either using ABPS or the National Automated Clearing House (NACH), depending on the ABPS status of a beneficiary, till March 31.

In a separate reply to a question from Trinamul Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha Jawhar Sircar, the minister had said 47 per cent of all MGNREGA workers were ABPS-enabled

A ministry official later said that the government expected sincere workers to make use of the relaxation and link the Aadhaar with their bank accounts by the end of this month.

However, Dreze said: “The ministry’s own data shows that the proportion of MGNREGA workers who are eligible for ABPS has risen by just a few percentage points in February and March, from a low base of 43 per cent at the beginning of February. This is not surprising since it is quite difficult for MGNREGA workers to meet the eligibility conditions, such as linking their bank account with Aadhaar and removing possible inconsistencies between their job card, bank account and the Aadhaar card.”

“On April 1, we will be more or less where we were on February 1, when ABPS was made compulsory despite ABPS being unusable for a majority of MGNREGA workers,” he said. Sircar expressed similar apprehensions. He said the mandatory requirement of ABPS compliance would exclude almost half of the workers from the MGNREGA net.