Overview
- The proposed law guarantees 125 days of wage employment per rural household each year, up from the current 100 days under MGNREGA.
- Funding would shift to a 60:40 Centre–state split for most states and 90:10 for North-Eastern and Himalayan states, with states also paying unemployment allowance and delay compensation.
- The Centre would set state-wise ‘normative allocations’ and notify the rural areas where the scheme operates, and any spending beyond the allocation would be borne by states.
- States could pause works during peak sowing and harvesting periods, reported as an aggregate of 60 days annually, while governance would add biometric checks, GPS-based monitoring and AI-driven audits.
- Opposition leaders objected to dropping Mahatma Gandhi’s name and warned of a rollback of rights and higher state burdens, as media reports cited an annual cost estimate of about ₹1.5 lakh crore with roughly ₹95,000 crore from the Centre.