NEW DELHI: Congress is joining the fight for MGNREGA right at the first step. The party has asked its workers to participate in greater numbers in gram sabha meetings that the central govt has called from Friday to spread “awareness” about the new “VB-G Ram G Act” that will replace MGNREGA, and to calmly counter the govt’s “misinformation” about the new law.Through an instruction by Congress general secretary KC Venugopal to state units, it has asked workers to lay before villagers the fact that the new law has essentially turned the “right to work” into a budget-controlled scheme and practically ended the demand-driven programme that had become a lifeline of the poor and marginalised communities over 20 years. The Congress directive has called the special village assembly meetings as a “platform to mislead rural workers and beneficiaries by projecting the new legislation as pro-poor”.In the wake of the opposition’s attacks over the disbanding of MGNREGA and threats of protests, the union ministries of rural development and panchayati raj led by secretaries Sailesh Kumar Singh and Vivek Bharadwaj have written to the states to convene gram sabhas on Friday to disseminate the salient features of the new law among villagers, especially SC/ST households and women.The opposition and the Modi govt have cross swords over the new law, which was suddenly brought in Parliament during the recently concluded winter session, and passed with a debate that saw the two sides wrangle over the finer points of the law. The opposition full-throatedly backed MGNREGA while slamming the new scheme as a govt bid to push the budgetary burden on the states.Congress has asked the states for mobilisation of workers, elected representatives and frontal organisations, with the direction that they should wholeheartedly participate in the gram sabhas and debunk the “misinformation” by the govt, while explaining how the new law takes away the poor friendly provisions of MGNREGA.In the upcoming CWC meeting on Saturday, Congress is likely to discuss the job scheme and may even draw up a protest plan for what Rahul Gandhi has called the party’s determination to force the govt to take back the new law.