Shimla, December 29:
With the Centre shifting a 10 per cent wage burden onto a cash-strapped Himachal Pradesh, Chief Minister Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Monday slammed the renaming and restructuring of MNREGA into GRAMIN (G-RAM-G), calling it a direct assault on rural livelihoods and federal fairness.
Leading a Congress protest near the Mahatma Gandhi statue at the Ridge as part of the INDIA bloc’s nationwide agitation, Sukhu said the new framework forces financially weak states to pick up costs they simply cannot afford.
“Earlier, the Centre bore the full wage liability and Himachal added an ₹80 per day incentive. Now, the Centre will pay only 90 per cent, leaving a fund-starved hill state to manage the rest,” he said, terming the move anti-rural and anti-poor.
The Chief Minister said the rechristened GRAMIN (G-RAM-G) also dilutes the original spirit of MNREGA by centralising planning and sidelining Gram Panchayats and Gram Sabhas. “Work planning earlier flowed from the grassroots. Now projects will be notified by the Centre for selected areas, reducing Panchayats to mere implementers,” he alleged.
Sukhu warned that Himachal would be among the worst affected, not just because of the added financial burden but also due to the discontinuation of salaries of Zila Parishad staff engaged under the scheme, which could cripple execution at the field level.
He announced district- and block-level protests across the state to “expose the anti-people nature” of the decision.
Raising another concern, the Chief Minister said the state government strongly opposes the Centre’s decision to reduce import duty on apples, cautioning that it would severely impact Himachal’s orchard economy. He assured growers that the issue would be taken up forcefully with New Delhi.
Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri, HPCC president Vinay Kumar, Cabinet ministers, MLAs, party office-bearers, Mayor Surinder Chauhan and senior Congress leaders joined the protest.
The CPM also staged similar demonstrations at various places in Himachal Pradesh, opposing the restructuring of MNREGA into GRAMIN (G-RAM-G).
