'Renaming Schemes, Not Reform’: Priyanka Gandhi Targets Govt Over VB-G RAM G Bill
Priyanka blasts Modi govt's renaming obsession.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has vehemently criticized the government's Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, 2025, introduced in the Lok Sabha amid protests, arguing that it fundamentally undermines the rights-based guarantee of 100 days of employment established under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) while centralizing authority and shifting financial burdens to states.
Addressing reporters in the Parliament House complex and later in the Lok Sabha, Priyanka Gandhi highlighted the Modi government's recurring pattern of renaming flagship schemes, emphasizing that such changes entail significant administrative costs, including revisions to stationery, signage, and documentation across thousands of offices nationwide, without delivering substantive improvements to beneficiaries.
She pointed out that despite the bill's provision for 125 days of employment, critical shortcomings persist, such as the absence of wage rate hikes and allegations of prolonged funding shortfalls under the current regime, with rural laborers frequently reporting delays in payments and reduced allocations over recent years.
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Priyanka Gandhi contended that the legislation strips gram panchayats of their traditional role in selecting local works and allocating resources, transferring these powers to the Centre and transforming a decentralized, demand-driven program into a more controlled, normative allocation-based framework.
The Congress party, joined by other opposition members, has pledged fierce resistance to the bill, decrying the removal of Mahatma Gandhi's name as emblematic of perceived hypocrisy in the government's tributes to the Father of the Nation, while asserting that the overhaul dilutes the original Act's core principles of rural empowerment and equitable development.
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