TURA: Villagers from two warring factions of Nayagaon village employment council in Demdema development block of West Garo Hills came to blows on Saturday after a public hearing over allegations of corruption in the use of funds for MGNREGA works.
The incident took place after the sub-divisional officer (Civil) of Dadenggre S F Hamid left the village after conducting a public hearing on the allegations.
Amid widespread reports of funds misuse from MGNREGA in several villages under Demdema block, a series of public hearings had been chalked out by the SDO (Civil) to ascertain the facts and bring the culprits to book.
Allegations were made against the VECs of Nayagaon, Rajpur and Askikandi in Demdema.
In one instance, several members of Nayagaon had revealed large scale misappropriation of MGNREGA funds by the secretary who stands accused of withholding payment of wages to several job card holders, using names of deceased people to fake the records of work including dual job card holders by several villagers in many of the works.
The fist fight at Nayagaon occurred after one faction allegedly supporting the accused secretary took on another group which had made the allegations.
The fight was finally broken up with the arrival of a police team.
