CHENNAI: Former union finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Sunday charged that the VB-G RAM G scheme introduced by the BJP-led union government does not ‘guarantee’ employment to the poorest of the poor as the MGNREGA did and that the Congress will continue to oppose the new law until it is withdrawn as “it would affect crores of poor people”. The livelihood of around 12 crore people in the country depended on MGNREGA, he said.
Addressing a press conference at the TNCC headquarters in Chennai on Sunday, Chidambaram said that the rural employment scheme, according to the new Act, would not be implemented in all districts, but only in those notified by the central government. Also, as per the new scheme, for 60 days in a year there won’t be jobs.
“Under the new scheme, the central government will allocate a certain amount for the scheme. If the expenditure exceeds this allocation, the state government will bear the rest. While the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was demand-driven, the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) scheme is supply-driven,” Chidambaram said.
The Congress leader recalled that on February 28, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said he was against the MGNREG Scheme. In his speech in Parliament, Modi had said, “My political sense tells me never to scrap MGNREGA since it is a living monument for your (Congress) failures.” But now the Modi government has scrapped it and introduced a fraudulent scheme. However, the Congress will continuously fight against it.
When asked about hiking the number of working days from 100 to 125 under the new scheme, Chidambaram said, “Across the country, only a few lakhs of people got 100 days of work under the MGNREGA. Instead of trying to ensure work for 100 days for the poor, the BJP government has merely hiked the number of days of work.”
Reacting to the verdict of the Delhi High Court regarding the National Herald case against Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi a few days ago, Chidambaram said the case was foisted on the Congress leaders without any legal basis.