Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has attacked the Modi government over using the UPA era flagship scheme Mnrega to benefit the poor in the lockdown while the BJP had earlier derided it for years.
New Delhi, June 8:
Congress president Sonia Gandhi has launched a fierce attack on the Modi government that has used the flagship UPA scheme of Mnrega to aid the poor in the lockdown. Gandhi said Mnrega has managed to prove its worth even in the “six years of a hostile government” and it should not be made a BJP vs Congress issue.
Sonia Gandhi, in an opinion piece in an English newspaper has hit out at the Modi government that has time and again slammed the UPA era scheme. In the coronavirus induced nationwide lockdown, PM Modi had announced benefits for the poor under the Mnrega scheme as lakhs were rendered jobless with the economy coming to a standstill.
In her article, Sonia Gandhi has written, “It has proved its worth in the years it has been in existence, even enduring six years of a hostile government. A government that sought to denigrate it, undermine it, has come to reluctantly rely on it.”
“Deeds are more important than words, and nothing speaks more eloquently than the finance minister’s recent and belated increase in the overall allocation of the programme to more than Rs 1 lakh crore,” Sonia Gandhi has said.
The Congress chief also targeted Prime Minister Modi over his attacks on the scheme. She even remembered how PM Modi had referred to the Mnrega scheme as “a living monument of your failure”.
“On assuming office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi realised that shutting down the scheme was not practical. Instead, he sought to deride it, attacking the Congress party in a caustic speech in which he called it “a living monument of your failure”,” Sonia Gandhi has said.
As the Modi government announced the Rs 20 lakh crore economic package to revive the country’s economy, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the allocation Rs 40,000 crore to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment (MGNREGA) budget as a means to ensure that migrant labourers do not face unemployment amid the nationwide lockdown.
Nirmala Sitharaman had said the budget estimate for Mnrega was Rs 61,000 crore, and now an additional Rs 40,000 crore has been allocated for the benefit of the labourers moving back to their villages.
Sonia Gandhi has said, “Faced with unprecedented hardship and an economy already in slowdown, the government was obliged to fall back on the UPA’s flagship rural relief programme.”
“The Modi government has grudgingly come around to the significance of the programme. My plea to the government is, this is a time of national crisis, not a time to play politics. This is not a BJP versus Congress issue. You have a powerful mechanism at hand, please use it to help the people of India in their time of need,” Sonia Gandhi has said.
