Jammu, Jan 9 (KNS): The Congress launched the ‘MGNREGA Bachao Sangram’ in Jammu, stepping up its nationwide 45-day agitation against what it termed the Centre’s move to dilute and replace the rural employment guarantee scheme.

Addressing party workers, AICC general secretary in charge of Jammu and Kashmir affairs, Sayeed Naseer Hussain, alleged that the Modi-led BJP government was systematically weakening landmark rights-based legislations enacted during the UPA regime.

He said laws such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Right to Food, Right to Information, Right to Education and the Forest Rights Act were aimed at providing legal guarantees in line with constitutional principles.Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp Channel

Hussain said MGNREGA, which provides a legal guarantee of 100 days of employment to rural households, had helped check distress migration and ensure livelihood security for the poor and landless.

He alleged that the BJP, unable to secure a mandate to amend the Constitution, was instead diluting statutory rights through policy changes.

Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee president Tariq Hameed Karra called for taking the MGNREGA agitation to the grassroots and linking it with the party’s ongoing statehood campaign, ‘Hamari Riyasat Hamara Haq’.

Several senior Congress leaders and former ministers attended the programme.(KNS).