Addressing a press conference, Sond said the new scheme will severely impact below-poverty-line families, Scheduled Caste communities, and rural labourers who depend on MGNREGA for survival. He said the Centre is trying to “hit two targets with one stone” – first by weakening guaranteed employment and second by burdening states financially, thereby attacking India’s federal structure.

The minister pointed out that while the Centre claims the new scheme will provide 125 days of work compared to 100 days under MGNREGA, official data shows that the BJP-led government managed to provide only an average of 45 days of work last year. “Making promises without delivery has become the BJP’s habit,” he said.

Sond explained that earlier, wages for unskilled labour were fully funded by the Centre, and material costs were shared in a 75:25 ratio. Under the new scheme, this has been changed to 60:40, placing an additional annual burden of around ₹600 crore on Punjab alone.

He further warned that the new scheme has no guarantee of work during peak agricultural seasons, removes unemployment allowance provisions, centralises decision-making on village-level works, limits permissible works, and replaces social audits with AI-driven biometric and geo-tagging systems, raising serious concerns about exclusion.

Sond highlighted that 70% of MGNREGA workers in Punjab are women, and shortening the scheme to 10 months will directly hurt them.

He announced that the AAP government has called a special Assembly session on the 30th to pass a resolution opposing this move and urged all states to stand united against what he termed a dangerous rollback of workers’ rights.

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