The Congress has announced a nationwide agitation from January 5 against the repeal of the MGNREGA, with party president Mallikarjun Kharge accusing the Narendra Modi government of not just “kicking the poor in the stomach” but stabbing them in the back too.

Briefing reporters after the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting that took the decision, Rahul Gandhi said the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act “has been destroyed single-handedly by the Prime Minister without asking his cabinet, without studying the matter”.

“Scrapping MGNREGA is an insult to the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi,” Kharge said, echoing what former Congress president Sonia Gandhi had written in a recent newspaper article.

“MGNREGA realised the Mahatma’s vision of Sarvodaya (‘welfare of all’) and enacted the constitutional right to work,” Sonia wrote.

“Its death is our collective moral failure — one that will have financial and human consequences for crores of India’s working peoples for years to come. It is imperative, now more than ever, to unite and safeguard the rights that protect us all.”

At the CWC meeting, members took an oath to lead an “MGNREGA Bachao Andolan”, committing themselves to fighting the Modi government’s decision to “convert the rights of the workers to a government dole”.

The VB-G RAM G Act that has replaced the MGNREGA does not only increase the states’ financial burden, it allows the Centre to fix the total expenditure beforehand irrespective of the demand for work on the ground. If the states want to spend more, they must do so out of their own pocket.

Having fought the 2004 polls successfully with the employment guarantee act as one of its election promises, the Congress now hopes to mobilise opinion against its repeal on the lines of the 2020-21 farmer agitation that forced the Modi government to withdraw three contentious agricultural bills.

“We will collectively struggle to secure the right to dignity, employment and fair and timely compensation due to India’s rural workers. We will protect the demand-based employment model and the autonomy of the gram sabha,” the CWC members pledged.

They accused the Modi government of flouting the federal structure of the Constitution by replacing the MGNREGA without consulting the states while increasing their financial burden under the new Act.

“This is an attack on the states of India because they are simply taking away money that belongs to the states, decision-making power that belongs to the states,” Rahul told reporters.

“This is an attack on the infrastructure of those states because MGNREGA used to build infrastructure and this is the decimation of Indian labour because MGNREGA used to guarantee a minimum floor (wage) below which Indian labour could not go.”

The CWC also discussed the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in several states and its implications. The Bangladesh situation, particularly the attack on Hindus, is said to have received mention.

Among those at the meeting were Shashi Tharoor and Digvijaya Singh, a former Madhya Pradesh chief minister who had set political circles abuzz in the morning with a post on X that seemed to praise the RSS.

In his opening remarks, Kharge described the SIR as “a well-thought-out conspiracy to restrict democratic rights”.

Referring to “evidence of vote theft presented” by Rahul, he said: “The collusion between the BJP and the Election Commission is well known to all. Therefore, we must ensure that the names of our voters are not deleted.

“We must ensure that names of people from poor and vulnerable sections, especially Dalits, Adivasis, Extremely Backward Classes, and minorities, are not removed from the voter list. Nor should they be transferred to other booths.

“For this, our BLAs (block-level agents) will have to go door to door with the voter list. For the states where elections are due in 2027, we should start working unitedly right now, from voter lists to all preparations.”

Digvijaya’s controversial post said: “I found this picture on the Quora site. It is very impressive. In what way did the grassroots swayamsevak of RSS and the worker of Jan Sangh @BJP4India sit on the floor at the feet of leaders and become the Chief Minister of the state and the Prime Minister of the country. This is the power of the organization. Jai Siya Ram.”

The picture was an old one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi sitting on the floor in front of BJP veteran L.K. Advani. Digvijaya tagged the Congress, Kharge, the Gandhi siblings and Modi.

He, however, signed off with “Jai Siya Ram” — a traditional greeting in north India — instead of “Jai Shri Ram”, a salutation that Hindutva groups have turned into an aggressive political slogan.

Asked about his post, Digvijaya told reporters that his comment was being misinterpreted. “I am a staunch opponent of the RSS and Modiji,” he said.