Representative image of MGNREGA workers.
Credit: PTI
New Delhi: Congress on Saturday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is renaming of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is to "erase Mahatma Gandhi from the national psyche" and to claim credit for the "revolutionary scheme", as it shared a list of 32 schemes of Congress-led UPA government that were renamed by the BJP dispensation.
The Union cabinet on Friday approved a Bill to rename the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act as 'Poojya Bapu Grameen Rozgar Yojna' and increase the number of work days.
Senior Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra told reporters that she can't understand what mentality is behind this. "First of all, this is Mahatma Gandhi's name, and when the name is changed, the government's resources are spent again on it. This is a big process that also costs money, so what's the benefit of doing this unnecessarily?" she said.
Congress General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal posted on X, "the Prime Minister who once called MGNREGA a 'monument of failure' is now renaming it to claim credit for the revolutionary scheme. It’s yet another way of erasing Mahatma Gandhi from our national psyche, especially from the villages where he said India’s soul resides."
He said this move was "also nothing but a cosmetic change to paper over the deliberate neglect" being meted out to this scheme. MGNREGA workers have been demanding higher wages, but the Centre has been reducing allocated funds for the scheme year after year, he claimed.
The arrears keep piling up, and it seems to be a carefully planned strategy to engineer a slow death for the scheme, he said.
"In reality, this government has no intent of delivering welfare - and is merely putting up a pretence when it has run out of ideas. But Mr. Modi, rename it all you want, the people know it was Dr Manmohan Singh-ji and Sonia Gandhi-ji who brought this transformative scheme to every village of India," he added.
Congress General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh said the Modi government is a "master" at renaming schemes and laws. "They hate Jawaharlal Nehru but it seems they also hate Mahatma Gandhi. What's wrong with the name Mahatma Gandhi?" he said
Sharing the list of 32 schemes and programmes "renamed" by the BJP government, Congress Social Media and Digital Platforms Chairperson said, "Modi's habit of renaming Congress schemes and making them his own is a long-standing one. This is exactly what he has been doing for 11 years -- renaming UPA schemes and applying his own stamp to them to garner publicity."
She said the Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG was renamed as PAHAL while Basic Savings Bank Deposit Accounts became Jan Dhan accounts in the Modi regime.
The Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan became Swachh Bharat Mission, National Urban Livelihood Mission changed to Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-NULM, Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship Scheme to Prime Minister Fellowship Scheme and National Optical Fibre Network to BharatNet among others, she said.