CHANDIGARH/BHOPAL: The Punjab Assembly on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution against the Centre’s move to replace MGNREGA with the Viksit Bharat—Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin), alleging it undermines a hard-won legal right to work and shifts financial burdens to states.
Moved by Rural Development and Panchayats Minister Tarunpreet Singh Sond during a special session, the resolution said the new law dilutes guaranteed wages and employment for poor labourers, women and lakhs of job card holders, converting a demand-driven scheme into a norm-based programme tied to budgets and predetermined plans.
Reacting sharply, Union agriculture and rural development minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the special session itself was “against the federal spirit of our Constitution.” “It is against the federal spirit of our Constitution for a state legislature to reject or move against a law passed by the Parliament.
Would a district or gram panchayat have the right to pass resolutions against state laws? This blind politics of the Opposition parties lacks substance,” he said in Bhopal, adding he was “surprised and disappointed.” Chouhan also alleged large-scale corruption in Punjab’s MGNREGA implementation and claimed social audits exposed thousands of irregularities without action.
Explaining the resolution, Sond recalled that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was passed in September 2005 and implemented in Punjab in 2008-09 before being renamed MGNREGA on October 2, 2009. Its objective, he said, was to mandatorily provide at least 100 days of wage employment annually to rural households willing to do unskilled work. While the new VB-G RAM G Act mentions 125 days, he argued the guarantee “remains only on paper” because allocations, not labour demand, will determine work.
Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann accused the Centre of hollowing out the scheme’s soul by rushing the law through Parliament within 14 hours. Calling VB-G RAM G an attempt to snatch “food, jobs and dignity” from Dalits, women and the poorest families, he demanded an immediate rollback, termed it anti-Punjab, questioned the promise of ‘Viksit Bharat.’