Bengaluru, 30 Dec

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to suspend the implementation of the Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RamG) Act, warning that the new law fundamentally weakens the employment guarantee framework and undermines cooperative federalism.

In a detailed letter to Modi on Tuesday, the Chief Minister expressed serious concern over the repeal of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), stating that the new legislation risks dismantling a demand-driven, rights-based entitlement that has served as a critical livelihood safety net for rural households.

“At the outset, I submit that the new law risks defeating the very intent of the original employment guarantee, a demand-driven, rights-based entitlement,” the Siddaramaiah said, while acknowledging that although the new Act increases the promised guarantee from 100 to 125 days, it does not provide assured planning or central funding to back that promise.

Siddaramaiah pointed out that the VB-G RamG Act caps the union government’s financial responsibility to a ‘normative allocation’ for notified areas of each state, with the Centre contributing only 60 per cent of that allocation in most states.

He added that it is constrained by a centrally determined funding ceiling, leaving many gram panchayats without funds despite genuine demand.

“In effect, a demand-driven regime is being converted into a supply-driven, top-down system,” Siddaramaiah wrote.

He stated that this diluted the constitutional vision of decentralisation under the 73rd Amendment.

Raising alarm over the revised funding pattern, Siddaramaiah said under MGNREGA, mainstream states followed a 90:10 Centre-State sharing arrangement, while the new Act shifts this to 60:40.

This, he said, converted a statutory guarantee into “a run-of-the-mill scheme” and imposed a heavy burden on state finances already strained due to GST compensation issues and inequitable financial devolution.

The provision making states fully liable for expenditure beyond their normative allocation could leave them facing 100 per cent financial responsibility for excess demand. In such a scenario, he said, the guarantee would depend not on demand but on a State’s fiscal capacity, rendering the entitlement unenforceable.

Siddaramaiah also criticised the requirement to pre-notify a 60-day no-work period during peak sowing and harvesting seasons.

Summing up the changes, Siddaramaiah wrote that the new framework shifts the intent “from ‘right to work’ to ‘work only if permitted’,” and from year-round rural employment to restricted periods and locations.

He also voiced concern that increased reliance on technology and contractor-led projects could exclude the poorest, particularly Dalit and Adivasi communities.