Mungeli, Chhattisgarh: The Chhattisgarh unit of the Congress on January 10 intensified its protest against what it termed the “dilution of the original spirit” of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), accusing the Union government of undermining the legal right to work for rural labourers.
Addressing a press conference in Mungeli, senior Congress leader Arun Vora, who has been appointed as the district media in-charge, said the agitation was being carried out across the State on the directions of Pradesh Congress Committee president Deepak Baij. He said the party would organise a series of programmes to oppose the changes being made to the employment guarantee scheme.
As part of the protest, a one-day fast was organised at the old bus stand under the leadership of District Congress Committee president Ghanshyam Verma and programme in-charge Dr. Premchand Jaisi. Mr. Verma alleged that the Modi government had “snatched away the right to work from labourers” by altering the MGNREGA framework, calling it an anti-worker move.
He said the promise of increasing guaranteed work from 100 to 125 days was “misleading”, claiming that in nearly 70% of villages in Chhattisgarh, work had been unofficially stalled after the BJP came to power in the State. Citing national data, he alleged that over the past 11 years, the average number of workdays provided under MGNREGA had been only 38 per year, and that the Centre had failed to provide the mandated 100 days of employment in any year. According to him, the scheme was being converted from a rights-based law into an administrative assistance programme dependent on the discretion of the Centre.
Dr. Jaisi said that earlier, work under MGNREGA was never stopped through government orders, but the new system allowed employment to be halted for fixed periods each year. This, he said, would enable States to decide when the poor could earn and when they would be left without income, particularly after funds were exhausted or during agricultural seasons.
Senior Congress leader Sanjeet Banerjee said MGNREGA was a constitutional guarantee linked to Article 21, but the new framework had turned it into a conditional, centrally controlled scheme. Another leader, Swatantra Mishra, alleged that the Centre was attempting to shift an additional financial burden of nearly ₹50,000 crore onto States by forcing them to bear about 40% of the expenditure.
A large number of Congress leaders and workers participated in the protest and fast, reiterating the party’s demand for restoration of the original rights-based structure of MGNREGA.