New Delhi: The Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) — VB – G Ram G Bill, 2025 was passed by the Lok Sabha on Thursday amid a huge uproar by the Opposition, whose members tore copies of the bill in the lower house and protested against the Centre’s move.
They demanded that the Bill be referred to a standing committee and protested in the Well, tearing papers after the Speaker said the legislation had already been discussed at length. The Bill will now be taken up in the Rajya Sabha.
The Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day after the bill’s passage and will convene on Friday at 11 am.
Opposition protests removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name
Earlier, several Opposition leaders, including Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, DMK’s T R Baalu and Samajwadi Party’s Dharmendra Yadav, opposed the Bill.
They argued that removing Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the law was an insult to the Father of the Nation and said the proposed legislation would place a greater financial burden on the states.
Mahatma Gandhi’s name added to NREGA for polls: Shivraj Singh Chouhan
Speaking on the bill in the Lower House earlier, Union Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan mounted a sharp defence of the bill while launching a broad attack on the Congress over MGNREGA and its political legacy.
Replying to a discussion on the Bill, Chouhan said successive governments had introduced job guarantee schemes even before the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act came into force.
He claimed that Mahatma Gandhi’s name was added to NREGA with an eye on the 2009 general elections.
As the minister spoke, Opposition members repeatedly interrupted the proceedings, chanting “we want MGNREGA”. The protests escalated when some members entered the well of the House, tore papers and flung bits towards the Speaker’s chair, forcing repeated appeals for order.
Chouhan rejected allegations by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra that the Narendra Modi government renames schemes at will. Countering the charge, he listed several welfare programmes named after members of the Nehru-Gandhi family, arguing that the Congress had a long history of attaching names for political gain.
The minister also accused the Congress of betraying Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals, saying the party had accepted the partition of India and ignored Gandhi’s call to disband the Congress after Independence. “The Congress itself killed Gandhian principles,” he said.
Highlighting what he described as flaws in MGNREGA’s implementation, Chouhan said several states spent disproportionately more on labour while neglecting material procurement, affecting the quality and durability of assets created under the scheme.
The heated exchanges and sloganeering continued through much of Chouhan’s reply, underscoring deep divisions between the treasury benches and the Opposition over rural employment schemes and the proposed G RAM G Bill. -(IndiaTV)
