Over 30 per cent of the 25 crore MGNREGA workers have become ineligible to seek any work under the national job scheme for not complying with the government’s mandatory Aadhaar seeding, a research group has said.

A report, "Unpacking MGNREGA", released by LibTech India, a private research group, says workers became ineligible because they did not comply with the government's directive of fulfilling the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS).

On January 30, 2023, the Union ministry of rural development (MoRD) issued letters to the states mandating them to use ABPS for processing the wage payments with effect from February 1, 2023.

The LibTech India report says there were 25.4 crore workers under MGNREGA as on April 8, 2024. Of them, 12.9 crore were active workers. It found that 8 per cent active workers did not comply with the ABPS mandate.

Mukkera Rahul, a researcher at LibTech India, said over 30 per cent of all workers, including the 8 per cent of active workers, will not be able to get MGNREGA jobs until they comply with the government directive.

The report also says that making the ABPS mandatory without providing adequate training to local officials and without considering the field realities such as inadequate banking facilities and technological challenges of the workers contributed to the deletion of 8.06 crore names in the last 24 months.

Rahul said the deletion of names from the MGNREGA database had been going on before the ABPS was made mandatory and continued after the directive was issued.

Earlier, the ABPS was in use alongside the account-based wage payments. The account payment system was made obsolete after the ABPS became mandatory.