Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge with LoP in the Lok Sabha and party leader Rahul Gandhi, party MP Sonia Gandhi and others arrives for the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, in New Delhi, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Vowing to protect UPA-era rural job guarantee law, Congress on Saturday announced a nation-wide 'MGNREGA Bachao Abhiyan' (Save MGNREGA programme) from January 5 next year, claiming the BJP government will have to face people's anger as the new law is aimed at taking money away from the poor and hand it to industrialists like Gautam Adani.
The decision to hold protests across the country through marches and other programmes at state, district, mandal and village levels came at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee chaired by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by senior leaders, including Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi.
At the CWC meet, the issue of attacks on minorities in Bangladesh, on Christians in India during Christmas, organisational issues and upcoming Assembly elections were also discussed though MGNREGA dominated the deliberations.
Both Kharge and Rahul projected the protest as one that argues for a demand-driven, rights based job programme that will give states their due political and economic freedom. They also placed it as Modi government’s design to concentrate power by depriving states and benefitting a chosen few corporates.
The government has enacted 'Viksit Bharat - Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission: VB - G RAM G Act 2025' last week repealing Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 and making it a supply-driven programme from a rights-based scheme as well as putting financial burden on states.
In his address at the meet, Kharge told the leaders, “the Modi government has scrapped MGNREGA, rendering crores of poor and vulnerable people helpless. After kicking the poor in the stomach, the Modi government has stabbed them in the back. Abolishing MGNREGA is an insult to the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi.”
Announcing the protest programme at a press conference with Rahul, the Congress president said people are angry over the repeal of MGNREGA and the government would have to face the consequences. Though both the leaders did not take questions at the press conference, Kharge said this law has been brought to crush the poor and will fight against it on streets and in Parliament.
Rahul claimed that the UPA-era development rights-based concept has been "destroyed single-handedly by the Prime Minister" without asking the Rural Development Minister and his cabinet as well as without studying the matter.
He warned that it would cause tremendous pain to the weakest sections, to the Adivasis, to the Dalits, to OBCs, to poor general caste and minorities and it is going to benefit Adani in full measure. That is the purpose of this -- to take money away from poor people and hand it to people like Adani," he said.
“This is an attack on the states of India because they are simply taking away money that belongs to the state and the decision-making power that belongs to the state. This is an attack on the infrastructure of those states because MNREGA used to build infrastructure. So it is a devastating attack on the states, on poor people of this country, and it is carried out by the Prime Minister single-handedly, much like demonetisation was,” he said.
Rahul also said the Congress will fight it and that he was confident that the entire opposition will be aligned against this action.