Patna, Feb. 4: The RJD has accused chief minister Nitish Kumar of promoting corruption in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Bihar.

It has also accused the chief minister of failing the scheme in the state.

The accusations have came from none else but former Union minister for rural development and senior RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, the man credited with overseeing this job guarantee scheme's conversion into an act and its implementation to provide 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to rural households whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled work.

"Nitish resisted the provision to pay the MGNREGA wages to beneficiaries through bank accounts to check pilferage of funds. Though this was being implemented in all other states, he insisted that cash be paid to labourers. As a result, the provision could be put in place in only 13-14 districts of total 38. This led to leakage in funds and severe corruption," Singh said.

The act, which aimed at enhancing livelihood security in rural areas was implemented from February 2, 2006, roughly the same time when Nitish embarked on his first full-term as a chief minister (November 2005).

It was implemented in phases - first in 200 districts and then in 150 districts. The last phase included all the remaining districts having rural component in the country.

"It's a decade of the MGNREGA and Nitish both. Since Bihar is my home state, so I have paid special attention on the way it was implemented here. The record has been very poor. The inbuilt checks and balances including awareness generation, people's participation, state vigilance, accountability and transparency were never fulfilled here," Singh added.

Asked about the accusations on Nitish, state rural development minister Shrawan Kumar said: "I fail to understand what the veteran RJD leader is trying to say. Bihar implemented the scheme to pay all MGNREGA wages to labourers through bank accounts a year ago, while there are many states that are yet to do so. He should tell us specific cases and we will take immediate action in them. It is the Nitish government which pays Rs 177 as wages for a day under the MGNREGA, while the act itself recommends only Rs 162 per day to labourers. The chief minister should be praised."

Shrawan added that Singh should blame the Union government instead because it has scaled down its fund share in the MGNREGA from 100 per cent to 75 per cent. Bihar will have to now pay 25 per cent as its share.

The former Union minister singled out the provision of 2 per cent of schemes started under the MGNREGA should be probed by government officials, which Bihar did not follow. "This was supposed to act a big check but I remember that at a national-level meeting, the then chief secretary of Bihar, Anup Mukerji, blatantly refused that 2 per cent of all MGNREGA schemes in the state cannot be probed. No official from any other state made such assertions. Bihar ki aise hi hansi nahi udai jaati hai (People don't make fun of Bihar without reason)," he said.

"Even the provisions that 10 per cent of schemes in each district would be probed by district officials, or social audits of schemes would be conducted, were primarily neglected," he added.

Singh, who represented Vaishali continuously from 1996 to 2014 in the Lok Sabha, expressed his anguish that at a time when Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh spent in the range of Rs 6,000- 8,000 crore a year under the job guarantee act, Bihar spent just around Rs 1,500 crore or even less despite widespread poverty in the state.

"While labourers registered under the MGNREGA managed to get 60 to 70 days of work in a financial year in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and national average hovered at 40-42 days, the figure for Bihar was just eight to 10 days. We could not even give pass marks to it," he added further.

The veteran leader, who turns 70 this year, pointed out that the job guarantee act, which has witnessed an expenditure of Rs 3.14 lakh crore across the country, and was even praised by the World Bank for its integral approach towards poverty alleviation, was a "demand-driven" one. This assured that there would never be any dearth of funds and states could expand it as much as they wanted.

But at the same time he expressed anguish over the attempts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre to dilute it by not providing money to states after labourers have worked. "This is like an unannounced closure of the scheme. Modi is playing into the hands of corporate who hate MGNREGA as it gives bargaining power to labourers and strengthens the panchayati raj system," he added.

Singh accused the Modi government of usurping 10 crore bank accounts opened under the MGNREGA and combining it with its Jan Dhan Yojana to claim that 19 crore bank accounts have opened under it. So far as the act itself is concerned, there is nothing new to its core. The former Union minister, who is a ready-reckoner on it, himself points out that "food for work" scheme was used during droughts and even normal times for building of assets during the medieval era.

It was adopted as "hard manual labour scheme" by the British as well as the princely states in the 19th and 20th centuries to create infrastructure like ponds, canals, railway lines, embankments among other things.