Jammu: The Jammu and Kashmir unit of the Congress launched its ‘MGNREGA Bachao Sangram here on Thursday as part of the party’s 45-day nationwide agitation against the Narendra Modi government’s VB-G RAM G Act that replaced the UPA-era rural employment scheme.
Congress general secretary in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir, Sayeed Naseer Hussain, accused the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre of “systematically diluting or dismantling” the MGNREGA enacted in 2005.
“The UPA government enacted historic laws such as MGNREGA, right to information, right to education, forest rights act and food security act to give legal guarantees to citizens. The BJP government is weakening these rights one by one,” Hussain claimed.
Terming MGNREGA the “world’s biggest rural job guarantee scheme”, he pointed out that it ensured 100 days of legally guaranteed employment, provided wages with accountability and checked distress migration from villages.
“The right to work is being snatched from the rural poor through dilution and replacement of the scheme. The Centre’s move in this matter is to dilute the rural employment guarantee scheme,” he alleged.
The Congress general secretary urged party leaders to take the movement to the grassroots to educate people about the “threat to the right to work”.
Jammu and Kashmir Congress president Tariq Hameed Karra said the BJP government had “destroyed the spirit” of MGNREGA, named after Mahatma Gandhi, by altering its framework. “Crores of rural poor benefited from this historic scheme, but its dilution has taken away their guaranteed jobs,” he said.
He said the MGNREGA campaign would be linked with the Congress’ statehood movement — ‘Hamari Riyasat, Hamara Haq’, to reach every household.
AICC secretary and co-incharge of Jammu and Kashmir affairs, Divya Maderna, said MGNREGA was the “brainchild of UPA leadership” to provide legal employment rights to the poor. “The new model seeks to weaken the poor and hand over control to crony capitalists,” she alleged.
