By Special Correspondent
Bhopal: Senior Congress leader and Congress Working Committee (CWC) member B K Hariprasad on Monday strongly criticised the Union Government, alleging that recent legislative changes passed in Parliament have effectively weakened the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
Addressing a press conference at the Madhya Pradesh Congress office in Bhopal, Hariprasad said the Centre, under the guise of “reforms”, was systematically dismantling the world’s largest employment guarantee programme and stripping poor rural citizens of their constitutional right to work. He termed the move an attack on Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of Gram Swaraj, dignity of labour and decentralised development.
He alleged that since 2014, the Modi government had consistently opposed MGNREGA, slashed its budget, withheld statutory dues to states, cancelled job cards and enforced Aadhaar-based payments, excluding nearly seven crore workers. As a result, he said, labourers were receiving barely 50–55 days of work annually over the past five years.
Hariprasad also accused the Centre of shifting the financial burden of nearly Rs 50,000 crore onto states while centralising control through digital systems, undermining cooperative federalism and grassroots decision-making.
On the National Herald case, Hariprasad welcomed the court’s dismissal of the Enforcement Directorate’s case, calling it a blow to “politics of vendetta”. He said the verdict exposed the misuse of investigative agencies to target Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, asserting that “truth has prevailed”.
