BJP, Opposition Lawmakers Clash in Parliament Over ‘G-RAM-G’ Bill

‘G-RAM-G’ Bill: A row has broken out in the Parliament on Tuesday as the BJP-led central government has brought a bill to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). This has set off alarm bells in the Opposition as they seek to keep the name of Mahatma Gandhi in the legislation and also question the government's intentions in making these changes.

The commotion in the Lok Sabha started when Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan asked the House to let him bring in the Viksit Bharat Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB G-RAM-G) Bill, 2025, a legislation aimed at scrapping MGNREGA.

Leading the charge against the government's proposal on behalf of the Opposition is Congress leader and MP for Wayanad, Priyanka Gandhi. She believes that the bill reflects nothing but the personal ambitions and obsessions of the government officials rather than what is genuinely in the public interest.

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“Mahatma Gandhi is not from my family, but he is like a member of it, and the entire country feels the same way. Such bills, which are inspired by someone’s personal ambition, obsession and prejudice, should neither be presented nor be passed,” she said.

The bill proposes a guarantee of employment for 125 days in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer for unskilled manual work. This is higher than the existing MGNREGA, which guarantees 100 days of wage employment in a financial year.

Responding to the Opposition’s protests, several MPs gathered in the well of the House holding placards, while Chouhan defended the bill, invoking Mahatma Gandhi and the idea of Ram Rajya.

“This bill is according to Mahatma Gandhi, and it is for the establishment of Ram Rajya,” he said, adding that Gandhi spoke of Ram Rajya and that his last words were “Hey Ram.”

“Mahatma Gandhi is in our every breath… don’t know why Opposition is miffed with G-RAM-G,” he said.

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Chouhan also accused the Opposition of double standards, pointing to past renaming of schemes.

“Previously, there was a scheme named Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, the UPA government changed the name of this scheme. Does that mean we take it as an insult to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru?” he asked.

He added that while the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government spent ₹2,13,220 crore on MGNREGA, the current government has spent over ₹8,53,210 crore “to uplift the poor and tried to strengthen this scheme.”

Opposition leaders, however, argued that the bill weakens both the spirit and structure of the programme.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor called it a “deeply regrettable and retrograde step for our nation and our nation’s commitment to the welfare of its most vulnerable citizens.”

He said removing Mahatma Gandhi’s name amounted to an attack on the programme’s philosophical foundations.

“Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of Ram Rajya was never a purely political programme. It was a socio-economic blueprint rooted in the empowerment of villagers, and his unwavering faith in gram swaraj was part of his vision of Ram Rajya,” said Tharoor.

He also took issue with the way the new bill’s funding mechanisms have been structured. He reckons that if the Centre suddenly offloads 40% of the responsibility for funding onto the states, it'll most certainly hammer the poorer states the hardest. As it stands, the new bill dictates that states will have a greater share of the financial burden. It remains a centrally sponsored scheme, but the Centre will only chip in for costs in a 90:10 ratio with the NE states, and Himalayan states like Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Other states and Union territories with legislatures will get 60:40.

On the same wavelength as Priyanka Gandhi is Nationalist Congress Party's Supriya Sule, who's now demanding that these proposed changes get sent to a parliamentary committee before the government even thinks about implementing them.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) T R Baalu said the “father of the nation is being ridiculed by the BJP government,” triggering slogans of “shame” in the House.

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