Jaipur: union Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today categorically stated that the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission-(Gramin) (VB-G RAM G), the reformed and new version of MNREGA, will neither be a threat to employment to Kisans, Mazdoors or unemployed ruralites, nor would be detrimental to the process of rural development and seasonal agro-farm activities.
Addressing a Kisan Sammelan at Dangawas village alongside the historic Merta town in Nagaur district, Chouhan said, “Contrary to wrong notion and negative narrative being raked up by the Opposition Congress, the ground reality about it is that the scheme has been reformed for added benefits to rural India, its denizens, specially farmers, mazdoor and unemployed weaker sectons. This would also ensure sustainable development of villages as per the needs, aspirations and opinion of villagers.”
To ensure that, due clauses and provisions have been made in the VB-G RAM G Act, 2025 in a legitimate manner, the union Minister assured.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, Agriculture Minister Dr Kirodi Lal Meena, Social Empowerment Minister Avinash Gehlot and several dignitaries were present.
Elaborating on the nitty gritty of the new version of the scheme, Chouhan said that the government has enhanced the scope (of benefits), the ceiling of the man days of employment to the needy in the scheme and also raised the budgetary allocations to an all-time high level.
He said that now needy person would get the employment for 125 days instead of the provision of 100 days in the phased out MNREGA. During the Congress regimes, the budget spendings for the erstwhile scheme were around Rs 40,000 crore that during the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s era has already crossed mark of Rs 1 lakh crore and in the new scheme PM Modi ji has raised allocation to Rs 1,51,282 crore.
There was general complaints about want of labourers for farm actvities during the crop sowing and harvesting season as man-power preferred to join MNREGA works. To address this situation, the new Act gives powers to the local rural administrators to suspend the in-progress works during crop seasons as per the local needs.
The decision on proposals of development works as per the needs of village would also be made by local villagers at the Gram Sabha, union Minister Chouhan added.
He assured of sustainable development of villages in speedy manner, due hike in the minimum support price (MSP) of crops sown by the farmers of the area.
“As per the need and demand of the farmers the Modi government would do all needful. We have so far been given over Rs 29,000 crore to farmers of Rajasthan under various schemes, initiatives and budgetsry heads during past 2 years. Today also, “budgetary sanction of Rs 2,000 crore have been given for laying more than 200 village roads.”
Chief Minister Sharma also gave detailed account on state government’s pro-people welfare governance that has been given higher priority to employment.
The CM said that as many as 20,000 unemployed ones would be get appointment letters for state government service within a week or so.
“My government has so far given employment to 90,000 youths and targetting to employ 4 lakh more in the current term in the office.We are bringing new youth policy that would give boost to employment creation, hassle-free, fair and impartial recruitment process. We have so far formulated 28 new policies for pro-people and development-centric governance,” the Chief Minister added.
