President Clears New Rural Job Law, MNREGA Replaced
- By Thetripurapost Desk, New Delhi
- Dec 21, 2025
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President Droupadi Murmu on Sunday accorded her assent to the Vibrant India–Employment and Livelihood Mission (Rural) Guarantee Bill, 2025 (VB-G-RAM-G), formally enacting it into law and thereby replacing the two-decade-old Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
The legislation, introduced by the Union government during the winter session of Parliament, was passed by both Houses on December 18 following nearly 14 hours of debate. The government has positioned the new law as a reformative restructuring of rural employment policy.
However, the move has drawn sharp criticism from the Opposition, particularly over the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the flagship employment programme. Senior Congress leader and former Union minister P. Chidambaram described the decision as an attempt to erase Gandhi from public life, remarking that “Gandhi was assassinated once on January 30, 1948. Today, he is being killed again.”
Addressing a press conference in Chennai, Chidambaram accused the Centre of attempting to systematically erase the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru from official institutions and records. “You may remove their names from government schemes, but you cannot remove them from the consciousness of the Indian people. They are as enduring as Buddha or Jesus, beyond the reach of executive orders,” he said.
Chidambaram also questioned the nomenclature of the new scheme, calling the acronym VB-G-RAM-G unintelligible to large sections of rural India. He alleged that the Centre has made the use of this precise name mandatory for states to receive funding, effectively coercing compliance.
Criticising the structural changes in the new law, he pointed out that while MNREGA was a universal, nationwide programme covering every rural district, the revised framework restricts coverage to select districts chosen by the Centre. Furthermore, the scheme will no longer extend to urban or town panchayat areas, diminishing its national character.
A key point of contention is the altered funding mechanism. Under MNREGA, the Centre bore the full cost of wages and 75 per cent of material expenses. The new law, Chidambaram noted, shifts a significant portion of the financial burden to state governments. “If a state lacks the fiscal capacity, the scheme simply will not operate there,” he warned.
He also rejected the government’s claim that the legislation would guarantee up to 125 days of employment per household. Citing existing data, Chidambaram argued that the national average currently stands at around 50 days, with only a small fraction of workers able to complete even the mandated 100 days under the previous regime.
Earlier, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi had also criticised the legislation, accusing the government of having “bulldozed” MNREGA. In a recorded message, she said that decisions regarding employment would now be taken by authorities in Delhi, far removed from ground realities, determining who would work, where, for how long, and under what conditions.
Defending the bill during parliamentary debates, Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan stated that the employment guarantee scheme was originally named the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and that Mahatma Gandhi’s name was appended only ahead of the 2009 general elections.
The passage of the bill triggered sustained protests within Parliament, with over 50 Opposition MPs staging a march demanding its withdrawal. Trinamool Congress members also held an overnight protest, underscoring the depth of political opposition to the new legislation.