Delegates attend the meet in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, Feb. 22: Three months after the severe drubbing at the Assembly polls, the Congress tried to aim its guns at the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government for failing to implement the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA).

But the event organised to celebrate the successful completion of five years of MNREGA proved to be a damp squib, as only 100 people attended it.

The presence of the state Congress chief and senior leaders at a meeting organised at a local panchayat bhavan was testimony to the fact that the party was yet to incorporate into its fold the grassroots workers, who had been sidetracked during the polls.

A source said the programme was organised to galvanise the working structure of the party and infuse energy among the leaders and workers.

But it remained a get-together of sorts. Most of the leaders left post lunch. Senior party leaders like Sadanand Singh — a former president of Bihar Congress, and Machandra Singh, arrived late. They also left halfway, on some pretext or the other. Leaders like Vijay Shanker Mishra, Dasai Choudhary, Sanjeev Prasad, Anil Sulabh, Afaque Alam and MLA Dr Javed were all present at the event.

State Congress chief Mehboob Ali Quaiser had to wait for three hours to speak.

He said if the party wants to revive its fortunes in the state, it would have to reach out to the common man. Meetings such as these were the ideal method to win the confidence of the residents of the state. More such meetings should be held at panchayat, block and district levels, instead of meetings for the party’s top brass.

Quaiser also said MNREGA — the biggest social employment scheme in the world — is in a shambles in the state because of the rampant corruption in the implementation of the act. The UPA government initiated the scheme in 2008.

“Government officials in the state take bribes for issuing job cards. They also produce fake documents,” said the Congress leader.

The scheme that was doing pretty well in other states like Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra was a failure in the state because of the corruption, he added.

In response to Nitish’s suggestion that central schemes should be abolished, Quaiser said these programmes played an important role in the development of the state.

“If the Centre slashes the funds, the state governments will realise how important these schemes are,” he said.

Quaiser also had a few good words for RJD — a former ally of UPA at the Centre. He said Lalu’s party had played an important role in planning out the programme.