Ambitious flagship scheme MGNREGA has expanded steadily over the past two decades in J&K with a whopping allocation touching 14,270 cr. While many parts of rural areas have yet to struggle with inadequate infrastructure, the scheme has played key role in supporting rural livelihoods in the Union Territory, generating as many as 53.43 cr person days of employment so far, thereby providing crucial income support to rural households.
However, there is a flip side to this picture as the worker participation under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Jammu and Kashmir has declined from its pandemic era peak, with 7.7 lakh workers provided employment so far in 2025 to 26, down from over 10.5 lakh workers in 2024 to 2025.
As per the official data tabled in Parliament , Jammu and Kashmir witnessed the deletion of 79,070 workers from the MGNREGA database between October 10 and November 14, 25, according to official data tabled in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.The figures were disclosed by the Ministry of Rural Development in response to a question on large-scale deletions from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme database.
The deletions in Jammu and Kashmir form part of a wider nationwide exercise during which more than 16.3 lakh workers were removed from job cards in just over a month. Jammu and Kashmir alone accounted for nearly five per cent of these deletions.While the government has described the exercise as routine and necessary to remove fake, duplicate or ineligible job cards, the data points to a persistent net decline in the registered workforce in the Union Territory over the past four years. Between 2022–23 and the current financial year 2025–26, Jammu and Kashmir has seen 664,799 workers deleted from the MGNREGA database, while only 463,926 workers were added, resulting in a net reduction of 200,873 registered workers.
The year-wise data indicates that deletions have exceeded additions in three out of the four years reviewed. In 2022–23, slightly more workers were removed than added. The gap widened sharply in 2023–24, when over two lakh workers were deleted against just over 74,000 additions. Although 2024–25 recorded a temporary reversal, with additions exceeding deletions, the trend again turned negative in 2025–26, with more than 2.41 lakh deletions compared to fewer than 99,000 additions so far this year.
Officials told Parliament that the responsibility for updating and deleting job cards lies with State and Union Territory governments and that such exercises are carried out to ensure database integrity. Job cards are deleted for reasons such as duplication, permanent migration of families, death of the sole listed worker, or when a gram panchayat is reclassified as urban. The Ministry stressed that States are required to follow strict procedures to ensure that no eligible household is wrongly removed.
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