Akhilesh Yadav accuses Centre of trying to ‘wind up’ MGNREGA through renaming, budget cuts

Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday accused the Centre of steadily cutting allocations for the rural employment scheme MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and said renaming the programme was part of a broader attempt to “wind it up”.

Yadav’s remarks came amid opposition criticism of the newly enacted Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Act, 2025, which has replaced MGNREGA.

“The BJP’s objective is not just to rename MGNREGA but to say only ‘Ram Ram’ to the scheme,” Yadav said, using the phrase to suggest a final farewell. He alleged that the ruling party “cannot tolerate anyone else earning a livelihood”.

In a post on X, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said changing the name of MGNREGA would achieve little in real terms. “In reality, this is the BJP’s secret conspiracy to slowly finish MGNREGA,” he wrote.

Yadav claimed that the Centre was shrinking the budget for the rural jobs programme while simultaneously increasing financial pressure on states.

“On one hand, the BJP government is cutting the MGNREGA budget to the bare minimum. On the other, it has created such pressure on states to spend their own resources that, due to non-receipt of funds from the Centre under the GST system, states already grappling with empty treasuries will find it impossible to arrange additional budgets,” he said.

According to him, this would force states to “themselves move towards ending the scheme”.

The SP chief also alleged that the government had dealt another blow to the programme by categorising hundreds of gram sabhas under the ‘urban category’, which he said resulted in the loss of MGNREGA-related budgetary support for those areas.

Opposition parties, including the Congress, have been targeting the Centre over the replacement of MGNREGA with the VB-G RAM G framework, arguing that the move dilutes the statutory right to employment guaranteed under the earlier law.

The exchange marks the latest flashpoint in the political battle over rural employment policy, with the opposition framing the changes as a retreat from social security and the government pitching them as reforms to improve efficiency and accountability in welfare delivery.