Parliament has cleared the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, formally repealing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, and ushering in a restructured rural employment framework. Passed amid sharp opposition protests, the new law increases guaranteed workdays but fundamentally alters funding, planning, and administrative control, changes that could significantly reshape rural employment delivery across States.
The Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha and secured Rajya Sabha approval late the same night, with opposition parties warning that dismantling MNREGA’s architecture risks weakening a long-standing statutory job guarantee for rural households.
While the government projected the law as a reform driven upgrade focused on efficiency, predictability, and flexibility, critics argued that shifting financial responsibility and centralising allocation could dilute the core promise of demand-driven employment at the grassroots level.
Under the new Act, guaranteed employment rises from one hundred to one hundred twenty-five days, with wages to be paid weekly and delay compensation fixed at zero point zero five percent per day beyond the fifteenth day. The scheme is no longer fully Centre-funded; instead, it becomes a centrally sponsored programme with a sixty–forty cost split between the Centre and States, modified to ninety–ten for hilly and North-Eastern States, and full Central funding for Union Territories without legislatures.
The law also empowers States to declare sixty no-work days during peak agricultural seasons and allows special relaxations during natural calamities. Crucially, the Centre will now set State-wise normative allocations, while planning and oversight shift to newly created National and State Steering Committees, reducing the earlier primacy of Panchayats.
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