National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or the NREGS is supposed to provide employment for a minimum of 100 days a year to every Indian family below the poverty line.

Critics say the scheme will allow local officials to divert the money into their own pockets and now the Minister for Rural Development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh wants to find out how the scheme has actually performed.

His ministry plans to ask the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to compile a report on the implementation of the scheme. The audit will examine implementation of the scheme in all 330 districts of the country.

An earlier report by the CAG had indicted the programmes' implementation but the ministry had rejected it then saying the report covered only 62 districts, so it did not give the complete picture.

A meeting of rural development officials presided over by the minister decided on Thursday to ask for a fresh audit.