Chief secretary Ashok Kumar Sinha has shot off letters to all district magistrates, asking them to constitute inquiry teams to detect anomalies in social welfare schemes.

The district magistrates (DMs) have been asked to ob-serve every Wednesday as “MGNREGA Divas” when the teams would visit every panchayat in each block to probe into the irregularities in the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and Indira Awas Yojana schemes.

Sinha sent the letter on September 1 in view of chief minister Nitish Kumar’s directive to the DMs to observe a day in the week as “MGNREGA Divas” after irregularities were detected in the implementation of the government schemes.

Rural development minister Nitish Mishra said the inquiry teams, headed by a senior district-level officer, would include either an assistant or executive engineer. The DMs would inform the block officials concerned on Monday about the teams’ visit to ensure that documents were available for perusal. They would be informed of their destination (panchayat) on Wednesday morning. The teams visiting a block would not go to the area again.

The teams would inspect how many projects have been sanctioned, their progress and payments made to labourers among others. The list of beneficiaries would be matched to muster roll. Mishra said: “The block development officer and block programme officer would let people know about the team’s visit with drum beating in the panchayat.”

The report would be submitted to the DM on Wednesday evening.