A CAG audit of Karnataka's rural housing works found irregularities in 56% to 99% of sampled projects. In one case, satellite imagery confirmed that a check dam paid for with ₹14 lakh of public money simply does not exist. In 12 others, officials submitted identical photographs for different construction stages.
The Comptroller and Auditor General's report tabled in the Karnataka Legislature on March 27 paints a portrait of an MGNREGS housing program that has essentially become a creative writing exercise. Of 2,560 housing works across 39 gram panchayats costing ₹5.04 crore, the CAG sampled 847 works worth ₹1.91 crore and found irregularity rates between 56% and 99% — the kind of consistency most government programs can only dream of achieving in actual delivery. In Yelburga taluk, Koppal, a check dam project consumed over ₹14 lakh in payments despite satellite imagery confirming no such structure exists at the site — a landmark achievement in invisible infrastructure. In Kalaburagi, geo-tagged photographs were altered and muster roll data vanished. Across the audit, 462 instances were found where muster rolls were generated for houses already completed — and in 12 cases, officials submitted literally the same photograph for multiple construction stages, apparently hoping nobody would notice that four different phases of building look identical. Eight payments went to non-existent or already-developed land. Social audits, designed specifically to catch this kind of fraud, detected nothing.