Parl panel omits G RAM G bill reference; its chairperson insists will discuss it | India News
NEW DELHI: A Congress MP-headed parliamentary committee, whose move to call a meeting on VB-G RAM G bill and comparing it with Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme had drawn protest from the panel’s BJP members, has revised the agenda of its Dec 29 sitting and omitted any direct reference to the new law. The original subject of the meeting of the standing committee on the rural development and panchayati raj was a briefing by the rural development department on “Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission-Gramin Bill and its comparison with the MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme)”. However, some BJP members of the panel saw red in the reference to the bill, now a law after assent from the President and gazette notification, as its provisions are yet to be rolled out.That Congress and other opposition parties have stridently criticised the new law which replaces the UPA-era Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) meant that BJP members believed the meeting’s agenda, which is generally a discretion of chairman, was aimed at political point-scoring.In an apparent attempt to defuse any row, the agenda is now revised as “briefing by the representatives of the department of rural development on the subject ‘MGNREGA and other issues relating thereto”, deleting any direct reference to the G RAM G law. However, the change may not preclude political confrontation in the Dec 29 meeting as the committee’s chairman Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka, a Congress MP from Odisha, insisted that they will still discuss the new law as it has now received President’s assent, which was not the case when the initial agenda was circulated. “We will discuss it,” he told TOI. Signalling differences with the chairman BJP MP Vivek Thakur, a member of the committee, was dismissive of the changed agenda. “The improvisation of the agenda is meaningless still. Once G RAM G bill is gazetted and the date of implementation is announced through it, it makes sense to discuss the new law. But right now, this smacks of an intent to politicise the agenda of a standing committee.” The ‘VB G RAM G’ bill had drawn strong protest from opposition members, and Ulaka had written to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla that it should be referred to his committee for scrutiny, a drmand not accepted by the govt.
