Top Cong leaders attend CWC meet, discuss further action against govt on G RAM G law

New Delhi: Top Congress leaders on Saturday are attending a crucial meeting of the working committee, the party's highest decision-making body.

They are deliberating on the current political situation in the country and the party's further action against the government after it replaced the UPA-era rural employment scheme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MGNREGA) with the new Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act (VB-G RAM G).

The extended meeting of the Congress Working Committee is being attended by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and former party president Rahul Gandhi, besides chief ministers of the Congress-ruled states of Karnataka, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh.

Presidents of Pradesh Congress Committees (PCC) are also present at the meeting.

The meeting comes ahead of next year's assembly polls in Assam, Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, and the leaders are expected to deliberate on the party strategy.

The opposition party is set to finalise its action plan to counter the government after it repealed the MGNREGA, 2005.

The Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill that replaced the UPA-era MGNREGA was passed during the recently concluded winter session of Parliament. President Droupadi Murmu has already given her assent to it.

The Congress and other opposition parties have taken strong exception to the new law replacing MGNREGA, stating that it is an insult to Mahatma Gandhi as his name has been removed from its title.

The new law makes a statutory guarantee of 125 days of wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to undertake unskilled manual work.

However, instead of being a Central scheme, the new law provides that the Centre and the states will have to share a 60:40 per cent ratio funding for the scheme.