Centre to introduce new bill to replace MGNREGS with Viksit Bharat GRAM

The Central government will introduced the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevil Mission (Gramin) Bill, 2025, to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) with an employment guarantee scheme. The Centre will introduce the Bill in the Lok Sabh, which, if passed, will reframe MGNREGA to transform rural development and provide statutory wage-employment guarantees to rural households.

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The Bill envisions aligning rural development with the Viksit Bharat 2047 vision focusing on empowerment, growth, convergence and saturation to build a prosperous and resilient rural Bharat Under the Bill, public works will be aggregated to form the Viksit Bharat National Rural Infrastructure Stack, prientising water security, core rural infrastructure, livelihood-related projects, and climate-resitent inibabives, it also aims to ensure adequate farm-labour avaliability during peak agricultural seasons and to istitutionalise Vilksit Gram Panchayat Plans for integrated, saturation-driven planning These plans will be linked with PM Gati Shakti, powered by geospatial systems digital public inhastructure, and district- and state level planning mechanens

Modern Digital Governance Framework

The Bill mandales a modem digital governance framework that incorporatis biomeltic authentication, GPS and mobie-based monitoring real-time dashboards, proactive disclosures and Artificial Intelligence tools for planning, auditing, and fraud risk mitigation

Definitions and Oversight

The major definitions under the Bill include adult members (1 years or older), households, Blocks, implementing agencies unskilled manual work, and the Viksit Gram Panchayat Plan The legislation also establishes Central and State Grameen Rozgar Guarantee Councils, as well as National and State-level Steenng Committees to oversee implementation.

Rationale for the New Framework

Highlighting the need for this strengthened framework, the Ball notes that over the past two decades, Mahatma Gandhi NREGA has provided quaranteed wage-employment, but rural transformations, including enhanced social security coverage, connectivity housing, electrification, financial inclusion, and digital access, requite an integrated and future-ready rural development strategy

"To cater to the changing aspirations, stronger convergence is required to establish on integrated, Whale of Government rural development tramework covening several complementary Government schemes. It is essential that rural intrastructure creaton must transition from fragmented provisioning to a coherent and future onented approach, and it is also essential that resources are distributed in a fair manner to reduce dispanties and promote inclusive growth across all rural areas of the country based on objective parameters the Bill cites.

The Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission aims to transition rural intrastructure creation from fragmented provistorving to a coherent, growth-oriented approach while erturing equitable resource distribution to reduce diaparities and promote inclusive development.

Implementation Strategy

The legislation will come into effect on dates notified by the Central different states or areas. Central Government and allows for phased implementation across MGNREGA an employment scheme under the Ministry of Rural Development that provides at least 100 days of guaranted wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adull members volunteer for unskilled work.

About MGNREGA

Any Indian citizen aged 18 of above and residing in a rural area can apply to this scheme. The applicant receives quaranteed employment within 15 day application date (ANI)