Modi govt cut funding for rural jobs programme, but patronized big corporates, says Mallikarjun Kharge

AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday hit out at the NDA government for introducing VB-G RAM-G Act in place of the UPA’s Mahatma Gandhi national rural employment guarantee act (MGNREGA) and slashing the funding support to states under the new law.

The Modi government, while cutting the funding for a programme targeting the poor people, was giving away the nation’s resources to big corporates, Kharge told the media in Bengaluru.

The Congress on Saturday launched a 46-day country-wide agitation pressing for the restoration of the UPA law. The AICC leader said the partymen fight against the new law would continue.


The MGNREGA was enacted as a law under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi during the Manmohan Singh government. The NDA regime has repealed law that was intended to address the hunger of the poor, the veteran Congress leader said.

The Centre's move would also hurt the functioning of panchayats, Kharge said, echoing the views expressed by his son Priyank Kharge, who is also Karnataka’s panchayat raj minister.

The new law would impose an additional burden of 30% more funding on the states to implement the rural jobs programme, while the same was earlier 10%, the Congress leader said suggesting that state government would find it hard to bear 40% of programme’s budget.

The NDA regime’s aim was to upend the MGNREGA scheme and prevent benefits from reaching the poor, he said, while accusing the Modi regime of targeting the UPA era pro-poor schemes.

The employment guarantee programme has created several assets, including lakes, roads, school buildings and anganwadis as per the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) report. "If the BJP is opposing such schemes, it is anti-people, Kharge said.

On recent developments in the poll-bound West Bengal, Kharge said, it showed BJP's way of defeating the opposition parties in different parts of the country by using special intensive revision. "We have been saying this from the beginning. Rahul Gandhi has been saying that vote chori (theft) is happening. Now everyone has started talking about it. We will take this issue forward."