A major digital audit, through Aadhaar, of government payrolls has sent shockwaves through the public administration sector, uncovering approximately 7,000 “ghost workers”—fictitious or non-existent employees—drawing salaries from the state exchequer.
A mandatory Aadhaar-linking drive for contract and outsourced staff triggered the investigation.
This audit exposed a sophisticated web of identity manipulation and financial siphoning that could involve thousands of crores in diverted funds.
The cleanup operation, led by the state’s Finance Department, targeted over 3.75 lakh outsourced and contract employees.
The government aimed to streamline its workforce data by enforcing digital Aadhaar verification.
Instead, the process uncovered alarming patterns of collusion between departmental officials and external recruitment agencies.
The Mechanics of the Fraud
The audit revealed that corrupt officials and outsourcing agencies allegedly worked in tandem to create bogus employee records.
These “ghosts” were assigned valid-looking employee codes and bank accounts, but had no physical presence in the offices where they were supposedly employed.
Key findings from the forensic analysis include:
- Duplicate Identities: In several instances, regular government staff were found to be drawing secondary salaries. They did this by posing as outsourced workers, such as home guards or panchayat secretaries.
- Family Routing: Investigators discovered cases where salaries for male employees were being routed into bank accounts held by their spouses or other relatives to evade detection.
- Agency Collusion: Certain private agencies continued to bill the government for workers who had either resigned years ago or never existed, siphoning the “wages” into pooled accounts shared among co-conspirators.
Aadhaar as the “Exorcism” Tool
The breakthrough came after the government ordered the suspension of salaries for any worker who failed to submit Aadhaar-linked digital details by the November deadline.
When officials cross-referenced the data with the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), the system flagged thousands of entries as unverifiable or suspicious.
The Finance Department sent these flagged entries back for physical verification.
Consequently, many departments admitted they could not find the individuals on their rolls.
This forced a massive “payroll pruning,” with over 5,000 names already deleted from the system and 2,000 more under active investigation.
Systemic Accountability and Recovery
The scale of the fraud has prompted the government to deploy vigilance teams across all major departments and corporations.
Beyond merely removing names, the state is now exploring legal avenues for fund recovery.
Under the Revenue Recovery Act, authorities plan to seize assets from officials and agencies found guilty of siphoning public money.
“This is not just an administrative error; it is an intentional medium for systemic corruption,” noted a senior official involved in the audit.
The government has issued a stern warning to all departments.
Any department attempting to bypass Aadhaar linkage by routing salary payments through alternate “heads of account” will face immediate criminal proceedings.
The current audit focuses on outsourced labor. However, there are growing calls for a similar human-centric, in-person biometric audit for all permanent public servants.
The state expects this digital cleanup to save hundreds of crores annually.
This success ensures that taxpayer money reaches genuine workers rather than “ghosts” in the system.
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