The Odisha Society for Social Audit, Accountability and Transparency (OSSAAT), an independent unit set up by State government to conduct social audit of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme implementation, has not conducted a single audit since its inception.
“No social audit has been conducted by Directorate of Social Audit in the State,” said the State government in a reply to an RTI query.
When frequent allegations of irregularities in implementation of MGNREGS were made, the Naveen Patnaik government mooted setting up of OSSAAT in order to come clean in 2012. The directorate functions under Panchayati Raj department.
“The idea of setting up of OSSAAT turns out to be a big hoax as no activity has been undertaken by Director, OSSAAT in Odisha till March 2014. Besides, no social audit of work under MGNREGS has been conducted by the directorate so far,” said Pradip Pradhan, RTI activist.
Mr. Pradhan said, “Manas Ranjan Mishra had joined as director, OSSAAT in October 2012 and left the directorate on March 14.
During this period, he drew Rs. 9,84,597 towards salary and other allowances. During his tenure of 17 months as Director, he has made only five field visits.” Government did not take any action based on his recommendations with regards to the five visits which means the Directorate of Social Audit remained a dormant body since its inception, the activist said.
He charged Naveen Patnaik government of befooling people by setting up the directorate when it faced a barrage of corruption charges in the flagship employment scheme.
According to Section 17(2) of MGNREGA, Mr. Pradhan said the Gram Sabha would conduct regular social audits of all the projects undertaken under the scheme, but it was found that conducting social audit was simply ignored by State Government over the years despite demand by civil society groups and opposition parties.
It was after intervention of Supreme Court and Centre, the government set up a directorate of social audits.
