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National

‘Use RTI Act to weed out corruption’

Special Correspondent

From NREGS, says Ashok Gehlot

JAIPUR: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has sought application of the Right to Information Act for elimination of corrupt practices in the much talked about National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

“NREGS is an excellent scheme. The country as well as the State cannot afford financial bungling and anomalies in such a vital scheme,” he said addressing a meeting of District Collectors here. He was candid enough to accept that the nascent scheme was already afflicted with the malady of corrupt practices. “What you have told the gathering here only confirms my notion on the existing corruption in NREGS,” Mr. Gehlot said in his concluding address here after the District Collectors, the State Chief Secretary and Ministers of various departments placed their views.

“When I was in the Opposition too I had been talking about corruption in the scheme. About 10 lakh persons out of the 40 lakh who got employment officially under the scheme must have been bogus,” he said making a rather startling observation on the goings-on in a State which ironically is widely considered one of the better States in NREGS implementation.

In his first collective interaction with the Collectors after taking over as Chief Minister for the second time six months ago, Mr. Gehlot also conceded that NREGS had a bad start in Rajasthan.

During the meeting, convened to brief senior district officials on linking the ambitious new “Harit Rajasthan” scheme with NREGS, Mr. Gehlot asked the Administration to implement the provisions of the RTI to bring about better transparency.

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