The Congress on Monday attacked the Centre over its ineffectiveness towards the International border problem and in tackling the migrants’ issue within the country during the corona pandemic lockdown. Former party chief Rahul Gandhi also took a swipe at Home Minister Amit Shah for his remarks that India is strong in protecting its borders saying everyone knows the reality of the situation at the country’s borders.
Rahul has been attacking the Government and the Prime Minister on the border standoff with China in Ladakh and has been asking the Government to come clean on the situation there.
“Everyone knows the reality of the ‘borders’, but the thought is good to keep one’s heart happy,” he said in a tweet in Hindi. Rahul Gandhi tweaked a couplet from noted Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib to take a dig at the Home Minister. Shah had on Sunday said India’s defence policy has gained global acceptance and the world agrees that after the US and Israel, if there is any other country that is able to protect its borders, it is India.
Asking the Prime Minister not to view Centre’s “reliance on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) as the victory of the scheme or of BJP’s political adversaries”, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said the Government should look at the scale of benefits the scheme will provide to migrants.
The Congress asked the Government to expand the scope of MGNREGA to meet the growing work demand of 8 crore migrants expected to relocate in villages in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. He said Covid-19 has demonstrated the “unmatched value of a people-centric scheme like the MGNREGA with a humbled Modi Government being constrained to commit an additional Rs 40,000 crore to it”.
Singhvi said the scheme was a Congress brainchild and it has proved to be the world’s largest social welfare scheme and “clearly the most efficacious government scheme”. He said since the PM is “compelled to fall back on a UPA scheme”, it is only appropriate that the Congress provides him with additional guidance for the next steps. The Congress leader said the Government has rightly given Rs 40,000 crore extra, but it must remember that the scale of the disaster of Covid-19 will require its further expansion.
With 8 crore migrants expected to relocate due to Covid-19, the Congress leader urged the Government to increase the number of guaranteed days of employment to 200 from the current 100 under the scheme. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in an article, has also said this is not about BJP vs Congress, but MGNREGA should be used to help people of India.