The story so far: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( MNREGA ) covers 26 crore registered workers across 2.69 lakh gram panchayats. Over the last six months, about 15 lakh workers were deleted. But in just one month, between October 10 and November 14 this year, they shot up to 27 lakh — nearly double the six-month total. This far exceeds the 10.5 lakh additions during the same period. The spike in deletions coincides with the Union government’s push to conduct e-KYC (know your customer) verification of workers, to weed out ineligible workers.

What are the government’s reasons?

The Union Ministry of Rural Development in a statement on Friday said that verification of MGNREGA workers is a continuous process. The e-KYC is another step towards this. “It will st

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