Yog Raj Sharma
The North News
Shimla, December 29
Senior leaders of the ruling Congress in Himachal Pradesh, including Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, staged a peaceful protest on Monday against the central government’s decision to rename the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The demonstration was held at Shimla’s Ridge, in front of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue, where Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri, state Congress president Vinay Kumar and several ministers and legislators joined the sit-in.
Sukhu accused the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government of targeting the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and weakening welfare schemes introduced during Congress rule. He said the move reflected what he described as a “politics of revenge and renaming”, aimed at diluting public welfare programmes by changing their identity and structure.
“The BJP is tampering with history. Schemes launched by the Congress are being renamed and amended to weaken them,” the chief minister said. He alleged that not only had the name of MGNREGA been changed, but its legal guarantee of employment had also been eroded, amounting to a gradual closure of the programme.
Sukhu further claimed that the Centre was attempting to erase Mahatma Gandhi’s identity from public policy, arguing that the removal of his name from the rural employment scheme was part of a broader ideological agenda.
Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri described the renaming of MGNREGA as an insult to Mahatma Gandhi, India’s “Father of the Nation”. He alleged that the central government was uncomfortable with the Gandhi surname and accused it of undermining a law that, he said, was designed to protect the poor.
“MGNREGA was not just a scheme, it was a rights-based law,” Agnihotri said, adding that the Centre was weakening states by curtailing such legislations.
