Mallikarjun Kharge backs recommendation for fixed MGNREGA wage, attacks govt

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for oppressing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) workers and backed the recommendation for a fixed ₹400 wage per manday along with 150 days of work annually per household.

In a post on X, he cited a parliamentary committee’s recommendation for increasing the daily wage of MGNREGA workers to ₹400. He said the former rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha-led high-level committee also suggested increasing wages and the MGNREGA budget.

Kharge, who highlighted that Congress introduced MGNREGA for the poorest families, called Modi “anti-poor”. He referred to the removal of workers registered under the scheme since the implementation of Aadhaar-based payments.

Kharge said that the Bharatiya Janata Party government has allocated the lowest MGNREGA budget in the last 10 years and accused the Modi government of hitting the scheme hard.

In February 2015, Modi described MGNREGA a “living monument” of the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government’s failures to tackle poverty in 60 years. He called the employment scheme the “nation’s pride” the following year.

The allocation for MGNREGA rose from ₹33,000 crore in 2013 to ₹86,000 crore 14 and 2025-26. The parliamentary standing committee on rural development this month recommended fixed wages under MGNREGA.

The rural development ministry notified the revised daily wages under MGNREGA in March, ranging from ₹241 in Nagaland to ₹400 in Haryana. The national average is ₹294 per mandays of work.