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Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday said that the performance audit of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for all the States will be placed before Parliament in November this year. Replying to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Ramesh said: "The performance audit of MGNREGA will cover the period from 2007 to 2011, and it must be underlined, that the Rural Development Ministry spends about 40,000 crore rupees each year on the job guarantee scheme." "Rural Development Ministry will receive the draft report by October end, as the audit is presently on in all the states," he added. Ramesh also informed that from this year, it would be compulsory for every Gram Panchayat to be certified by a Chartered Accountant, drawn up from a district level panel prepared by Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). Referring to the corruption in the implementation of the rural job scheme in some of the States, Ramesh said, the Centre can do very little to curb this menace and it is upto the State Governments and particularly the Gram Panchayats to take the lead in fighting corruption. He said from time to time state governments are apprised of the reports of the Central Teams regarding irregularities, if any, for corrective action.

Performance audit of MGNREGA will be placed in Parliament in Nov: Jairam