MNREGA Renamed to Pujya Bapu Gramin Rozgar Yojana: Cabinet Reviews Proposal for India's Rural Employment Program

MGNREGA functions as both a labor law and social security initiative designed to ensure the "right to employment" for rural citizens.

New Delhi:

A proposal has been submitted to the Cabinet seeking to rename the flagship MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme), which was introduced during the UPA government's tenure. The Central government announced today its decision to rename the program as Pujya Bapu Gramin Rozgar Yojana.

Preparations are underway to implement the Pujya Bapu Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which aims to extend the employment guarantee from 100 to 125 days annually for impoverished rural residents.

Plans are in progress to allocate more than Rs 1.5 lakh crore for this initiative.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) serves as a labor protection and social security framework that guarantees the "right to employment." Under this program, rural citizens are provided with at least 100 days of guaranteed unskilled manual labor opportunities.

Currently, approximately 154 million people participate in the scheme, with women constituting around one-third of all beneficiaries.

This global-scale work guarantee program, initially launched as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act during Manmohan Singh's government, was renamed after Mahatma Gandhi in 2009.

As part of the Centre's decentralization efforts, the scheme incorporates the Panchayati Raj institutions, which are responsible for guaranteeing 50 percent of the work. A crucial feature of the program is that if employment cannot be provided within 15 days of an individual's application, an unemployment allowance must be paid.