Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) has launched a statewide agitation against the repeal and renaming of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The Opposition party alleged that the Centre has dismantled a critical rights-based livelihood programme for rural India. AICC secretary and MP Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka, who also chairs the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Employment and Panchayati Raj, launched the agitation from Congress Bhawan in the presence of NPCC president and Lok Sabha MP S Supongmeren Jamir, working president Khriedi Theunuo, and several senior party leaders.
Addressing party workers, Ulaka criticised the “undemocratic and hasty” manner in which the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission–Gramin (VBG RAM-G) Act was passed in Parliament, alleging that the legislation was introduced and cleared without a proper debate, effectively replacing MGNREGA and diluting its core rights-based provisions. The AICC leader further accused the Centre of systematically weakening MGNREGA over the past 11 years through delayed wage payments, chronic underfunding and denial of material costs.
Referring to Nagaland, he alleged that the state continues to have one of the lowest MGNREGA wage rates in the country, with no revision for several years. Ulaka said the 45-day agitation would include media conferences across the state, symbolic fasts, panchayat-level outreach programmes, submission of memoranda to district authorities, and rallies aimed at mobilising public opinion in defence of the employment guarantee scheme.
