Mail News Service
Jamshedpur: Left parties observed an All-India Protest Day on December 22 against the BJP-government’s proposal to alter the fundamental nature of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
To mark the occasion, a street corner meeting was organized at Birsa Chowk in Sakchi, Jamshedpur, under the joint aegis of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M). An effigy of the central government was burned at the protest.
In a joint statement, the Left parties said that MNREGA was a universal and demand-driven law, implemented in 2005 under the UPA-I government’s Common Minimum Program. They alleged that through the “Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Act, 2025,” the central government was shifting its financial responsibility to the states, imposing a significant financial burden on them.
Speakers at the meeting said that the new law’s provisions, including suspension of employment for up to 60 days during the busy agricultural season, refusal to work due to limited budgets, digital and centralized systems, and payment at rates lower than the minimum wage, are against the interests of poor rural laborers. The leaders alleged that renaming the scheme is an attempt to erase Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy.
Left parties demanded that the central government immediately withdraw the bill, make all pending payments, and release sufficient funds for at least 200 days of employment under MNREGA. CPI and CPI(M) workers, including Hira Arakane, KP Singh, RS Rai, Gupteshwar Singh, Dhananjay Shukla, Biman Chatterjee, S. Vishwakarma, Arup Majumdar, Surendra Agarwal, Vikram Kumar, Kamlesh Kumar, Mukesh Rajak, and Nagaraju, attended the event.
