A plea wants the Supreme Court to direct the Centre to allow workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to choose how they want to be paid their wages, and not impose on them “opaque and cumbersome” payment methods like the Aadhar Based Payments System (ABPS).
The application by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, said 34.8% of total registered workers (8.9 crore) under MNREGA and 12.7% of active workers (1.8 crore) are still ineligible for ABPS as on December 27, 2023. There are a total of 25.69 crore workers in MGNREGA of whom 14.33 crore are considered to be active workers.
The application said ABPS was a payment with a “number of layers”. For ABPS to work, not only must the worker’s job card and bank account be linked with her Aadhaar, but the bank itself must be linked to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) mapper through the bank’s Institutional Identification Number (IIN).
