Patna: The state government has set up a social audit society that is studying the impact of implementation of schemes under Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Bihar.

The social audit work would be done in 10 districts in the current fiscal (2018-19) and the work would be carried out in three phases. The first phase of social audit work got underway earlier this month in Nalanda, Purnea, Madhubani, Muzaffarpur, Nawada, Gaya, Banka, Khagaria, Patna and Katihar

Explaining the purpose of setting up the society, a senior official with the rural development department told The Telegraph: "In the long run the state would have a dedicated agency with expertise in carrying out the social audit of schemes of other departments such as those of food and consumer protection, panchayati raj among others."

At present the society boasts of two state-level resource persons and 32 district-level resource persons whose selection has been done on the basis of their expertise in related work. In addition to this, the government has also created a pool of 2,500 village-level resource persons who have been imparted training in social audit work.

While the state-level and district-level resource persons are on the rolls of the society, the payment of village-level resource persons would be done in the form of honorarium whenever their services would be used.

Sharing other major benefit of the move, the official said the social audit work would help us in assessing the deficiencies in different schemes being implemented at present and those could be fine-tuned for making the schemes friendlier to the beneficiaries.

"The social audit work would also help us in detecting irregularities, if any, that had been done while implementing the scheme and thus nailing the persons who are responsible for such acts," added the official.

As far as MGNREGA schemes are concerned they have proved to be a major source of employment generation at the local level in rural Bihar.

In 2017-18, around 8.17 crore mandays of employment were created in Bihar which benefited 29.05 lakh families. In the current fiscal 4.96 crore mandays of employment had been created till July 15, which benefited 23.06 lakh families.

The department is aiming to create 9 crore mandays of employment in the current fiscal.