'PM has not actually understand MGNREGA', says Rahul Gandhi in Kerala

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday for criticising the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). "I was shocked in Lok Sabha when I heard the Prime Minister speak against MGNREGA," Gandhi said at an event in Kerala's Wayanad. "He called it a living monument of the failures of the UPA. He called it a drain on the exchequer. It made me realise that the PM actually had not understood the depth of MGNREGA," Gandhi added, according to news agency ANI.

Continuing his attack, Gandhi also said that PM Modi did "not understand the MGNREGA" and claimed that the employment policy had "forever transformed the Indian labour market." "He had not understood that MGNREGA was, for millions and millions of Indian people, the last resort and huge protection," he said.

MGNREGA provides livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to at least one member of every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work in exchange for minimum wage.

As the economy of the country was crippled due to demonetisation and "faulty" implementation of the GST, and then affected by Covid, the scheme has become even more important now to protect the livelihood of the common people, Gandhi also said.

Gandhi is on a three-day visit to his Lok Sabha constituency. He made the comments while addressing the MGNREGA workers' meet at Koliyadi, in Sulthan Batheri in Wayanad district.

Earlier Gandhi visited the party office in Wayanad, days after it was vandalised by the Students' Federation of India (SFI) activists over the buffer zone issue. "It is the office of the people of Wayanad and what had been done by the Left students' cadre was quite an unfortunate thing," he told reporters after the visit.