The Union government is likely to revamp the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and increase the number of guaranteed working days to 125 from 100, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

The scheme will be renamed the Pujya Bapu Gramin Rozgar Yojana, The Hindu reported. The proposal was discussed in the Cabinet meeting on Friday.

The MGNREGS was introduced in 2005 by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and is aimed at enhancing the livelihood security of households in rural areas. The scheme guarantees 100 days of unskilled work annually for every rural household that wants it, covering all districts in the country.

Funds for the scheme are contributed by the Union and the state governments.

The Times of India quoted unidentified officials as saying that the Cabinet approved the draft legislation, titled the Pujya Bapu Gramin Rozgar Guarantee Bill, that will replace the MGNREGS.

The bill will be introduced in Parliament during the ongoing Winter Session, which will conclude on December 19.

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in his press briefing after the Cabinet meeting on Friday had not listed the bill among the proposals that had been cleared.

Several states have demanded that the maximum working days under the scheme should be increased.

In April, a parliamentary standing committee urged the Union government to raise the wages under MGNREGS to at least Rs 400 per day and increase the number of guaranteed working days to at least 150 days.

Daily wages under MGNREGS currently range between Rs 241 and Rs 400 in different states.

The committee had said that the base wage rates under the scheme should be revised to ensure that they align with current economic realities.

While the law guarantees work for 100 days, the average days of employment provided per household under the scheme was 50 days in the financial year 2024-’25.

BJP erasing ‘Mahatma’, says Opposition

The Congress said that the “same MGNREGA that Narendra Modi once called a bundle of Congress’ failures” had “proved to be a lifeline for rural India”.

“Modi ji has an old habit of renaming Congress’ schemes and claiming them as his own,” the party leader Supriya Shrinate said. “That’s exactly what he has been doing for the past 11 years – rebranding UPA’s schemes with his own label and using them for publicity.”

West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress said that the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s decision to “erase ‘Mahatma’” from MGNREGS was “not merely an administrative revision”, and was “an ideologically motivated act”.

The Trinamool Congress said that the decision “exposes” the Hindutva party’s “long-standing hostility toward Bengal’s cultural and intellectual legacy”.

“It was Tagore who popularised the title ‘Mahatma’ for Gandhi, making it part of India’s ethical vocabulary,” the Opposition party said. “Erasing it reshapes the way India remembers freedom itself.”