NEW DELHI: Congress MP P Chidambaram on Sunday launched a sharp attack on Centre’s move to replace the MGNREGA, calling the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the scheme the “second killing of Mahatma Gandhi.”Addressing a press conference in Chennai, Chidambaram said the Congress would continue to oppose the new law until the earlier employment guarantee framework is restored, reported PTI. “The party will expose this fraud by going from house by house, village by village, and our struggle will continue until this Act is repealed,” he said. Parliament on December 18 passed the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G Bill), which seeks to replace the 20-year-old MGNREGA and promises 125 days of rural wage employment annually.Reacting to the change, the former Union finance minister said, “According to me, it’s the second killing of Mahatma Gandhi. He was killed once on January 30,1948. They have killed him again — they have killed his memory again.” He added, “You can try to erase Gandhi and Nehru from official records, but they live in the deep consciousness of the Indian people, like the Buddha or Jesus. No government order can wipe them out.”The senior Congress leader argued that the new legislation reverses the nature of the employment guarantee by turning a legal entitlement into a discretionary scheme. “Under the original law, if a person demanded work, the government was legally bound to provide it. Now, people can only ask for work if the government first offers it,” he said.He also questioned the naming of the new programme, referring to the use of “Hindi words written in English letters,” and said titles such as “Viksit Bharat G Ram G” would be confusing for rural populations in southern states. “Even ministers may not understand what these names mean. The law now says that unless states use this exact name, they will not receive funds,” he said. The Congress leader further claimed that the scheme’s coverage would be curtailed, saying it would now apply only to “notified districts” chosen by the Centre, unlike MGNREGA’s national scope. He also alleged that responsibility for the funds was being shifted to states, warning that implementation would suffer if states lacked resources. “Four years ago, the allocation was Rs 1,11,000 crore. For the past three years, Rs 86,000 crore. Next year, it is only Rs 65,000 crore. Any cost above Rs 65,000 crore is the state government’s responsibility,” he fadded. Chidambaram said the rollback would hurt the “ultra-poor,” particularly women and daily wage earners. “The scheme is a safety net for 12 crore people who depend on daily wages. In Tamil Nadu, 90 to 95 per cent of workers are women; they will suffer the most,” he further said.He also dismissed the Centre’s claim of increasing workdays to 125 as “unrealistic,” noting that the national average currently stood at 50 days. Recalling that MGNREGA was passed unanimously in 2005, he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had once described it as a “living monument” of the UPA’s failures. “Now the same government is dismantling it,” he added. Go to Source