The government has made eKYCs mandatory for MGNREGA cardholders to get work, a technological intervention that may deny jobs to crores of rural people.

A report, MGNREGA Employment in India: Insights and Trends during April-September 2025, released on Monday by private research group LibTech India Ltd said that the latest directive for eKYC from the Union ministry of rural development had come at a time when nearly half of the active workers and two-thirds of all workers had not completed their eKYCs.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provides up to 100 days of unskilled work to every rural family in a year. The ministry introduced the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) in 2021 to register workers' attendance through a mobile application and the Aadhaar-based payment system for wages.

Workers have complained about difficulties in complying with the two key technology-based monitoring mechanisms because of poor Internet and complicated procedures.

The ministry recently issued a circular to states mandating them to get eKYC of workers on the NMMS app by providing updated Aadhaar. The ministry began implementing the new measure from November 1.

The report analysed ministry data from the MGNREGA website and found that there were 26 crore workers registered under the scheme, of whom 11.3 crore were active workers. According to the report, an overwhelming 68.8 per cent of all workers and 46.9 per cent of active workers have not completed their eKYCs as of November 12.

The report said that workers were required to complete their eKYCs and provide a photograph, which would be used as the reference image. Each time the NMMS takes a photo from the work site for registering attendance, it will match a worker’s photograph with the reference image taken during the eKYC. If it matches, only then will a worker be marked present. Workers who fail to complete this process are at risk of being denied access to work and wages.

Rahul Swaera, a researcher at LibTech India, said they had done ground verification to see its impact on workers. The eKYC has become a precondition to access work, he said.

"Preliminary findings from our field investigations suggest that several workers are unable to complete eKYC due to technical glitches such as device-level errors, application failures and weak network connectivity. Also, migration is a more fundamental barrier, since many workers are currently employed in distant towns or states and are unable to return home in time to complete this requirement," Swaera said.

He said the availability of trained personnel, inadequate smartphone penetration and poor Internet access in rural and remote areas had slowed down the rollout of eKYC.

Among the states, the situation is worst in Madhya Pradesh, where 93.9 per cent of all workers and 90.5 per cent of active workers are yet to comply with the eKYC mandate. Similarly, 88.8 per cent of all workers in Gujarat and 88.6 per cent of all workers in Haryana are yet to comply with eKYC.