In three years, the registration of construction workers with the Karnataka Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board has seen a nearly a fourfold increase, a large number them said to be bogus registrations to avail of facilities.
While the board’s membership in 13 years between 2007 and 2019 was 9.5 lakh, the numbers drastically increased by 36.91 lakh between 2020 and 2023. Currently, the membership is pegged at 46.42 lakh. While 7.94 lakh registrations took place in 2020, the registrations increased by 12.86 lakh in 2021 and 11.95 lakh in 2022. So far in 2023, 4.14 lakh people have registered.
Lax verification
The steep increase, both government and central trade unions acknowledge, was mainly due to bogus registration during the BJP government’s tenure when the pre-registration verification remained lax. The extent of the increase is such that while in 2020 only Shivamogga had registration exceeding a lakh, after online registration was introduced, 22 districts have more than one lakh registrations. Haveri, the home district of the former Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, saw a steep increase — from 44,911 in July 2020 to 2.86 lakh in April 2023.
“Membership, which was confined to the construction workers, became attractive to others too as the quantum of financial assistance for various programmes increased. The start of the online registration process in 2019 increased opportunities for non-construction workers to register with fake documents,” K. Mahantesh, general secretary of the Karnataka Building and Other Construction Workers Federation, told The Hindu.
By July last year, when the total registrations were 37.75 lakh, as many as 27.39 lakh registrations had come from the Seva Sindhu portal alone. While manual registration accounted for just 3.5 lakh, the registration on the Karmika portal was about 6.86 lakh. “Despite many petitions seeking an investigation into fake registration through Seva Sindhu, the government turned a blind eye,” Mr. Mahantesh said.
Distress during the COVID-19 pandemic added to more registrations. While the BJP government’s efforts to utilise the board’s money for pandemic control failed, about ₹1,970 crore was utilised for COVID-19 assistance by the board.
“The DBT transfers to beneficiaries made it attractive and big money was available with the board. Cards have been issued rampantly across the State. More than 36 lakh cards were issued during the BJP government’s tenure. For example, in Haveri, there are nearly 2.9 lakh cards whereas there are only 2.5 lakh households,” a senior Labour Department source said.
Meanwhile, Labour Minister Santhosh Lad acknowledged the problem of bogus cards and said that the renewal had now been made stringent. “The renewal is being done on app and online mode. However, the worker has to provide details about the construction site, the name of the supervisor, and the name of building owner, among others, that can be verified.”
However, urging the government to stop the registration of members from the Seva Sindhu portal, Mr. Mahantesh said, “Unless the verification process is stringent, bogus registration cannot be stopped. Online registration should be done at the Labour Department offices and by central trade unions.”
Efforts to collect more cess
Efforts will be made to increase the quantum of cess collected annually by the Karnataka Construction Workers and Other Building Workers Board. Labour Minister Santhosh Lad said, “Of the ₹1,000 crore collected annually, cess collected from government works account for about ₹800 crore while it is about ₹200 crore from private constructions.” He said that in the coming days, all building constructions across the State will be geo-mapped and reconciled that it was expected to bring in more cess. Mr. Lad also said that an estimated ₹1,500 crore had to come from the Centre since it had not given the State the cess it had collected since 2008.
