The government said a new interim base wage rate of ₹300 per day has been introduced, ensuring that no notified wage under the programme is below that level

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The Centre has notified the revised wage rates under the new rural employment guarantee scheme under the Viksit Bharat — Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025 (VB-G RAM G), which came into force on July 1.After the revision, the national average has been hiked to ₹327.4 per day against ₹298.8 per day under MGNREGA (now repealed).New wage rateThe government said a new interim base wage rate of ₹300 per day has been introduced, ensuring that no notified wage under the programme is below that level. The average increase in wage rates across the country is over 10 per cent, it said, adding that Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh have witnessed wage increases between 15 per cent and 25 per cent.The government said that States with higher existing wage rates have also received upward revisions, with Haryana having a notified wage rate of ₹409 and Kerala ₹401 per day.The national launch of the VB-G RAM G Act will be held on July 2 at Mukkavaripalli village in Obulavaripalle mandal of Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati district, according to an official statement on Wednesday. It also said that existing e-KYC-verified job cards will be valid until the new Gramin Rozgar Guarantee Cards are issued.Rollback DemandBut the Opposition Congress criticised the wage rates, saying these are far below the recommendations of the expert panel and need to be further increased to ₹500 per day. Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary D Raja has demanded immediate restoration of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to its full potential. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay has also written to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking certain modifications in the VB-G RAM G scheme.The notification for wage revision came a few hours before the new law was to take effect across all the States and Union Territories, which the Congress party said wage rates were normally announced in April.Demanding repeal of the scheme and a strengthened MGNREGA, Congress said the revised wages are “unjustifiably low” and not as per the 2019 recommendations of the expert committee headed by Anoop Satpathy.Congress General Secretary and former Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said that in the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign, the party had promised to fix the national daily minimum wage for all workers, including for MGNREGA, at ₹400/day. “The Expert Committee headed by Anoop Satpathy, set up by the Modi Government, had also recommended a national minimum wage floor at ₹375 per day, back in 2019,” Ramesh said.The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development under the Chairmanship of Congress MP Saptagiri Ulaka has also consistently recommended higher wages for MGNREGA workers, Ramesh said.Ulaka, addressing the media, said that his party has been fighting the VB G RAM G Act from the streets to Parliament and would continue to do so. “We appeal to the government that the VB G RAM G be repealed and a strengthened MGNREGA be brought back,” he said.MGNREGA was a rights-based, demand-driven employment guarantee scheme which the government has converted into a supply-driven, government-driven scheme under which the Centre will decide which State would get what money based on the normative allocation that is adopted by the 16th Finance Commission to distribute the single divisible pool of taxes among states, he pointed out.Ulaka also said that a key concern is the new cost-sharing formula since the central government used to cover nearly 100 per cent of the labour cost under MGNREGA and material costs under the 60:40 ratio. But the combined labour and material costs are now subject to a 60:40 ratio under VB G RAM G, he added.Published on July 1, 2026