The Union government is expected to introduce the 2025 Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill to replace the 2005 Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

The proposed legislation will increase the number of guaranteed working days to 125 per year from the 100 days per family per year under the current employment scheme under the MGNREGA.

The MGNREGA 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.

While the wage bill for the scheme is borne by the Union government, the states share the cost of materials and administrative expenses.

The new bill proposes that the states will now bear 40% of the costs.

The governments in the North East states, Himalayan states (Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh) and the Union Territories with Legislature (Jammu and Kashmir) will contribute to 10% of the funding.

The Centre will bear all costs in Union Territories that do not have a legislature.

The Union government will determine the state-wise normative allocation for each financial year based on “objective parameters”.

It also proposed that only the Union government can notify rural areas in a state where the scheme will be implemented.

The proposed legislation retains the provision that a person is entitled to a daily unemployment allowance if work is not provided within 15 days of applying under the scheme. The cost of the allowance will be borne by the state governments.

On Monday, NREGA Sangharsh, a rights group representing MGNREGA workers, demanded that any changes to the Act should be introduced only after “public disclosure and democratic consultations” with labourers, workers’ organisations, trade unions and the states.

“We will oppose and resist this regressive step,” NREGA Sangharsh said. “We will not allow the law, made from the struggles of workers, to be ended by unilateral decisions.”

‘Cost-shifting by stealth, not reform’, says Opposition

Opposition MP John Brittas said that the Union government was removing the “soul of a rights-based guarantee law” and replacing it with a “conditional, centrally controlled” scheme stacked against the states and the workers.

“Cost-shifting by stealth, not reform,” the Communist Party of India (Marxist) member said. “This is the new federalism: states pay more, Centre walks away, yet claims the credit.”

He added: “This bill doesn’t reform MGNREGA – it dismantles it fiscally, institutionally and morally.”

This came two days after reports that the Union government was considering a revamp of MGNREGA, including an increase in the number of guaranteed working days.

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 the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to at least Rs 400 per day and increase the number of guaranteed working days to at least 150 days.

Daily wages under scheme 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.

On Friday, 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 on Friday that the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s decision to “erase ‘Mahatma’” from MGNREGA was “not merely an administrative revision”, and was “an ideologically motivated act”.