File Picture : ANI/X
Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has said the “demolition” of the historic Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) will have catastrophic consequences for crores of people across rural India and called upon all to unite and safeguard the rights that protect everyone.
In an editorial in The Hindu titled The bulldozed demolition of MGNREGA, the former Congress chief said the “death” of MGNREGA is a collective failure.
Dear brothers and sisters,
20 years ago, when Dr. Manmohan Singh ji was the Prime Minister, the MGNREGA law was passed in Parliament by consensus. It was such a revolutionary step, the benefits of which reached crores of rural families. In particular, it became a source of… pic.twitter.com/73tUFSjRTy
— Congress (@INCIndia) December 21, 2025
This comes a day after President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, which replaces the MGNREGA and has a provision for 125 days of wage employment for rural workers.
“MGNREGA realised the Mahatma’s vision of Sarvodaya (welfare of all) and enacted the constitutional right to work,” Gandhi said.
“MGNREGA realised the Mahatma’s vision of Sarvodaya (‘welfare of all’) and enacted the constitutional right to work. Its death is our collective moral failure – one that will have financial and human consequences for crores of India’s working people for years to come. It is… pic.twitter.com/0FTKZ6n35S
— Congress (@INCIndia) December 22, 2025
“It is imperative, now more than ever, to unite and safeguard the rights that protect us all,” she added.
Gandhi said the employment guarantee scheme to deal with rural distress has now been “bulldozed and demolished”.
MGNREGA was a rights-based legislation inspired by Article 41 of the Constitution of India, which calls upon the government to secure citizens’ right to work, she said.
“Over the past few days, the Narendra Modi government worked to bulldoze MGNREGA’s abolition without any discussion, consultation, or respect for parliamentary processes or Centre-State relations. The removal of the Mahatma’s name was only the tip of the iceberg. The very structure of MGNREGA, so integral to its impact, has been annihilated,” she said.
She described VB-G RAM G as “nothing but a set of bureaucratic provisions”.
The Modi government’s new Bill has restricted the ambit of the scheme to rural areas as notified by the Union at its discretion, Gandhi said.
Against uncapped central allocation, there is now a pre-determined budgetary allocation that caps the number of days of employment provided in each state. The number of workdays provided are, therefore, left to the Centre’s priorities rather than the people’s needs, she said, adding that the all-year guarantee of employment has been finished off.
