BENGALURU: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday said the Union government, which is attempting to change the name and structure of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), has exposed its hatred towards the poor and Mahatma Gandhi.
“We strongly condemn this anti-people decision of the Narendra Modi government, which has snatched food from the plates of the poor, insulted Bapu and attempted to strangle state governments financially. We will launch a statewide agitation against this move.
The responsibility of preserving the MGNREGA scheme in its original form must be taken up by lakhs of beneficiaries. They must hold BJP leaders in the state accountable and exert pressure on them to raise their voices against this injustice, rising above party lines,” Siddaramaiah said.
The CM said the NDA government has altered the very structure of MGNREGA, a scheme whose entire expenditure was earlier borne by the Union government, by shifting nearly 40% of the cost on to state governments.
Siddaramaiah said over 25 flagship programmes launched during earlier governments were merely renamed or repackaged like the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan into Swachh Bharat Mission. These changes reflect a consistent pattern of altering names rather than fundamentally strengthening or expanding the original intent of these welfare initiatives, he alleged.