Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday dubbed the V B G RAM G Act "Rozgar Adhikar chori", and said it replaces a constitutional right to work that has empowered gram panchayats with a highly centralised scheme that places an intolerably heavy financial burden on state governments.

Ramesh shared an article by former Jammu and Kashmir finance minister Haseeb Drabu to slam the new law.

"Haseeb Drabu, one of India's finest economists and the former finance minister of J&K, has written a very incisive article exposing the realities of the VB G RAM G that has been bulldozed through to replace the transformational MGNREGA," Ramesh said in his post on X.

"VB G RAM G is really Rozgar Adhikar chori. It replaces a Constitutional right to work that has empowered gram panchayats with a highly centralised scheme that places an intolerably heavy financial burden on state governments," Ramesh said.

The new law brings in technology not to facilitate but to exclude, he claimed.

It is not round the year as MGNREGA was, Ramesh added.

In his article, Drabu has said the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (Mgnrega) -- now renamed the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) or VB-G RAM G -- was a rights-based, demand-driven scheme that gave households a legal entitlement to 100 days of unskilled work. It has now been converted into a formula-driven, centrally determined transfer, he said in his article in an English daily.

As the VB-G RAM G Act came into effect last Wednesday, the Congress had demanded the repeal of the rural employment scheme and that a strengthened MGNREGA be brought back, claiming the wages under the new law are unjustifiably low.

The opposition party had asserted that a just minimum wage for India's workers would be ensured by adopting the 2019 recommendation of the expert committee headed by Dr Anoop Satpathy and accommodating the increase in prices since then.

The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, or the VB G RAM G Act, came into force across the country from July 1, replacing the two-decade-old Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), introduced by the Congress-led UPA.

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