BY TC News Desk
Agartala, 25th January 2026: Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president Ashish Kumar Saha today launched a scathing attack on both the Centre and the State governments, alleging that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has been “virtually scrapped” and reintroduced in a new form to mislead and deceive rural people.
Addressing a press conference, Saha said that promises of “more workdays, higher wages and increased budgetary allocation” are being aggressively propagated through government funds, IT cells and various publicity platforms to confuse people across the country and the state.
He pointed out that during the UPA regime, MGNREGA accounted for nearly 4 percent of the central budget, whereas in the current financial year the allocation has dropped sharply to just 1.37 percent. Since 2014, more than 10 crore job cards across the country have reportedly been cancelled in the name of digitisation, Aadhaar linkage and bank KYC, including nearly 9 lakh job cards in Tripura. As a result, the average number of workdays has declined from 45–46 days to around 32–33 days in the state, he claimed.
Saha further alleged that over the past 11 years, only 8 percent of job card holders have received the full 100 days of work, most of whom are allegedly close to the ruling party. He also accused the authorities of allowing wage payments without workers actually being present at worksites, and stated that crores of rupees in wages remain pending both at the national and state levels.
Citing Social Audit Reports published on the website of the Union Ministry of Rural Development, the TPCC president claimed that financial irregularities worth hundreds of crores of rupees have been detected in Tripura’s MGNREGA projects between the financial years 2018–19 and 2025–26. According to him, the government is now attempting to dilute the legal entitlement under MGNREGA through new laws to conceal these irregularities, allowing a large portion of funds to be diverted to contractors and sections aligned with the ruling party.
“MGNREGA is not just a scheme; it is the backbone of the rural economy. Weakening this programme means destroying the livelihood of the poor,” Saha said, adding that the Congress will continue statewide movements against these policies.
