By Dr. Gyan Pathak
Nearly 2.7 million workers have been locked out of the digital framework of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA), the only employment guarantee scheme for the poor rural workers, between October 10 and November 14, 2025. Their names have been ultimately deleted from the MGNREGA database, rendering the jobless, which is unkindest cut of all. Draft Shram Shakti Niti 2025, if accepted, is likely to digitally lock out millions of workers both in urban and rural areas, the experts have warned.
It should be recalled that the Union Ministry of Labour have published the Draft of the Shram Shakti Niti 2025 – National Labour & Employment Policy of India on October 8, and invited the stakeholders, institutions, and members of the public to submit their feedback, comments, and suggestion within 20 days by October 27, 2025. Internet Freedom Federation (IFF) had submitted its objection warning that the digital framework without protection may lock out informal workers, rural labourers, and migrant workers from the employment system of the country.
The deletion of names of 2.7 million MGNREGA workers in just one month, has vindicated the IFF’s objection, and this is just beginning even under the older digital framework being implemented by the Union Government. During this period only 10.5 lakh additions were made. The deletion coincides with the Union Government’s making e-KYC (electronically know your customer) process mandatory, purportedly to weed out ineligible beneficiaries, and to put break on corruption. Nevertheless, the officials of the Union Ministry of Rural Development have been quoted ruling out any correlation between the e-KYC drive and the deletions.
The Officials said that verification of the MGNREGA job cards is a continuous process and the onus is on the State governments and ultimately, the gram panchayats, to carry this out. One thing which they did not say that it was the digital framework which is used to prevent workers from getting jobs under the scheme, and allegation that has been raised by the MGNREGA workers organisation ever since it was launched in May 21, 2021 as pilot project, using the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app. It was made mandatory for all worksites, except individual beneficiary scheme) from January 1, 2023.
There have been many rules under which works are denied to MGNREGA workers. According to the rules, job cards must be renewed every five years. The officials have been quoted saying that this exercise is currently underway, adding “We have also issued a Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) for the deletion of any job card, which includes putting out the job cards finalised for deletion in public domain, allowing time for the beneficiaries to file an appeal, and a final approval from the Gram Sabha.”
The Centre has mandated e-KYC, and had issued a 13-page note to the state government on July 8, 2025. The e-KYC process requires the mates, or MGNREGA supervisors, to click pictures of each of the workers and upload them on the NMMS, to match their photographs with their Aadhaar data. Under NMMS, geo-tagged photographs of the workers are to be uploaded twice a day. It has been problematic due to poor connectivity locking many workers out from the employment system.
Nevertheless, the Union Ministry of Rural Development note stated that “irrelevant or unrelated photographs” were being uploaded. In many cases “photo-to-photo capturing instead of live work images” was being done. There was also “mismatch in actual vs recorded count.”
After the NMMS system, the Centre has made the Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS) mandatory from the beginning of 2023. Any discrepancy in worker’s name, photo, Aadhaar card, job card, and bank account, is enough to deny them work. It is in spite of the fact that the government documents themselves contain many errors, for which no official is accountable. It makes genuine workers suffer.
The consortium of activists and academicians Lib Tech, has just flagged this “unusual” rate of deletion from the MGNREGA database. It said that over the last six months, deletions added up to about 15 lakh. However, in just one month, they shot up to 27 lakh, nearly double in previous six-month. In the first six month of the financial year 2025-26, the scheme had net additions of 83.6 lakh workers. Total addition was 98.8 lakh as against deletion of 15.2 lakh.
The Lib Tech said that by mid-November, the net additions had fallen to 66.5 lakh, effectively wiping out 17 lakh workers in a month. It is a very distressing for the 6 lakh active workers whose name were deleted, who have worked at least one day in the past three years, making them eligible beneficiaries.
The current deletion of the name of workers is the outcome of implementation of all these digital frameworks, without providing protection to genuine workers. MGNREGA digital framework shows how workers are being locked out from digital framework based employment system.
Union government has very big plan under the Draft Shram Shakti Niti 2025, to bring all workers in the country under digital framework. IFF, in their submission, has warned that the digital framework without taking into account the ground reality, may lock out large number of workers from employment system of the country. Government’s intention to use AI-driven job matching may create another level of problems to workers. IFF has flagged the issue of accessibility for workers to the digital framework, which we have already been witnessing in the case of MGNREGA workers. (IPA Service)
