Protests mar passage of 'G RAM G' bill in LS

The Lok Sabha on Thursday approved the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) or VB-G RAM G, bill, which seeks to replace the two-decade-old Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, by a voice vote amid loud protests by the Opposition.

- Smriti Kak Ramachandran and Sanjay Maurya

The passage of the contentious bill, which seeks to rejig the federal rural jobs programme, was marked by chaos in the House, with Opposition MPs demanding that it be referred to a standing committee. Shouting slogans against the government, several members entered the Well of the House, tore copies of the bill and flung the papers in the direction of the Chair. Speaker Om Birla rejected the demand to send the bill to a standing committee, saying the VB-G RAM G BILL legislation had already been discussed at length. "The kind of indecent conduct displayed by the Opposition that tore the pages of the bill and threw them around...is that not an insult to Bapu (Mahatma Gandhi)? Parliamentary decorum was thoroughly disregarded, reducing the spirit of democracy to a display of disorder and unruliness," Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said after Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day.

The developments came after eight hours of debate that continued till 1.30am on Wednesday before resuming on Thursday in the Lok Sabha.

"This is not merely a case of renaming MGNREGA; rather, it is the systematic murder of the world's largest employment scheme," Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said.

The bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha at 6.46pm on Thursday. The debate was still on at the time of going to print.

The new scheme proposes to provide a statutory guarantee of 125 days of wage employment in every financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to undertake unskilled manual work, up from 100 days under MGNREGS.