Nearly 40 lakh job cards have been deleted from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) database in the first six months of the 2024-25 fiscal, dealing a blow to rural households, a report released on Friday said.

Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Assam and Bihar witnessed the maximum number of deletions, according to the report on MGNREGA Implementation in India: Insights and Trends, April-September 2024. (See chart)

Of the 24.6 crore registered workers, 84.84 lakh workers’ job cards have been deleted while 45.47 lakh new workers have been added during this period. This is in addition to the mass deletions of job cards being carried out by the rural development ministry and the state governments in recent years under the job scheme that provides up to 100 days of employment in a year to every rural family.

The government has told Parliament that deletions are routine updates, carried out to check duplicate or fake cards, deaths and cardholders’ unwillingness to work under the scheme. An ongoing study by LibTech India in Andhra Pradesh has found that about 15 per cent of the deletions were wrongful.

“Instead of an increase in workers, deletions have outpaced new additions. This ongoing trend raises concerns about the fate of the genuine workers among over eight crore workers who were removed in the past two-and-a-half years from April 2022 to September 2024,” the report said.

The report has provided data from the ministry website and analysed the figures without going into the reasons.