Ongole: Andhra Pradesh witnessed an unprecedented decline of 14.20 lakh MGNREGA workers during the mandatory Aadhaar-based e-KYC rollout between October 8 and November 19, 2025, marking an 11.40 per cent drop in just 42 days, says official data.

LibTech India is a collective of engineers, social workers, and social scientists who have been working together in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and other states for the last 10 years. The team prepared an analysis report on Employment Status in Andhra Pradesh using government data on MGNREGA. The analysis shows total workers fell from 124.70 lakhs to 110.50 lakhs, while active workers declined by 6.20 lakhs, representing a 6.40 per cent reduction. Districts such as Annamayya recorded the steepest fall at 27 per cent, followed by Kakinada at 25 per cent, Tirupati at 20 per cent, and East and West Godavari at approximately 18 per cent each.

The reductions coincided precisely with the compressed six-week deadline for completing e-KYC through the National Mobile Monitoring System app. Despite Andhra Pradesh achieving 79 per cent e-KYC completion for total workers and 86 per cent for active workers, making it the top-performing state nationally, the sharp spike in deletions suggests administrative pressure rather than genuine data verification. Significantly, AP accounts for roughly 60 per cent of all MGNREGA deletions recorded nationally during the October 10 to November 12 period, according to official MIS data.

The report documents serious violations of the Ministry’s January 2025 Standard Operating Procedure for worker deletions.

Required safeguards, including draft deletion lists, public display at Gram Panchayats, Gram Sabha verification, worker notification periods, and objection windows, were bypassed entirely. Workers received no opportunity to object or appeal their removal.

LibTech India identifies systemic barriers, including peak migration, weak network connectivity, biometric authentication failures, incorrect Aadhaar seeding, and repeated NMMS application errors. Frontline officials, facing intense daily monitoring and a one-month deadline, appear to have used MIS deletion actions as administrative shortcuts rather than conducting proper field verification.

The pattern mirrors the 2022 to 2023 ABPS transition, when 78 lakh workers were deleted.

The organisation recommends that the state government seek the withdrawal of mandatory e-KYC requirements, launch a reinstatement campaign through public displays of deletion lists, and revive consultations with workers and civil society organisations, modelled on the earlier Andhra Pradesh NGO Alliance platform.