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After pushing a digital-first attendance system as a transparency reform, India’s rural development ministry has quietly backpedalled, now requiring states to manually verify the very data its mobile application was meant to automate after finding instances of “misuse and manipulation”.
The Union Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) on July 8, 2025 directed states and Union Territories (UT) to manually verify digital attendance records under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
The directive calls for the formation of dedicated monitoring cells at the state, district and block levels. These cells, to be staffed with existing human resources, will be responsible for daily scrutiny of data uploaded via the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS), photo validation and reporting of discrepancies.
Introduced in 2021 and made mandatory in 2022, the NMMS mobile application was designed to digitally record worker attendance with photographs taken at the beginning and end of each workday. However, nearly four years into its rollout, MoRD has flagged at least seven ways in which the system is being “misused or manipulated”.
A letter accessed by Down to Earth highlighted that MoRD has observed several irregularities and misuse of the system that have allegedly “undermined the credibility of the digital attendance system and may lead to financial misuse of public funds”. These include the uploading of unrelated photographs, use of pre-captured photos rather than real-time images and mismatches in the recorded versus actual number of workers on-site.
Other discrepancies cited include inconsistent gender data, identical photos of workers appearing across multiple muster rolls, mismatches between morning and afternoon attendance photos and failure to upload afternoon images altogether.
Worker protests over the app’s shortcomings had surfaced as early as 2023, with demands to scrap the system raised during demonstrations at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.
According to MoRD letter, these irregularities raise serious concerns about a lack of monitoring and accountability at the state, district and block levels, which impacts the integrity of the implementation process and may lead to financial irregularities and potential corruption.
To restore the transparency and accountability of the digital attendance system, MoRD has proposed 100 per cent verification of uploaded photographs and attendance records, with cross-verification to be undertaken at multiple levels. It has also called for strict action against individuals found guilty of deliberate manipulation of the system.
Regarding the capture of afternoon attendance, MoRD noted that while the NMMS application allowed for both morning and afternoon photos, many users have been bypassing the system by uninstalling and reinstalling the application to circumvent its restrictions.
“Since the application restricts capturing the attendance of a particular day if the afternoon photo of the previous day was not captured, this misuse of the application is a serious concern and needs strict disciplinary action against the responsible field functionaries,” the letter said.
MoRD said it is now working on a new provision that will prevent wage list generation unless both morning and afternoon photographs are uploaded in line with the norms. Additionally, the e-Muster Roll will be generated directly from officers’ logins, with automatic calculation of wages based on geo-tagged images uploaded to the NREGASoft system.
If only one photograph, either morning or afternoon, is uploaded, workers will be paid for only half a day. No wages will be released if no photograph is uploaded.
Emphasising a zero-tolerance policy, MoRD said “no relaxation will be given” in matters concerning misuse or manipulation of the NMMS system.
