Senior Congress leader Vilasrao Deshmukh, who took charge today as the Union rural development minister, said he would look into the controversy over delinking the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the government’s largest rural employment programme, from the Minimum Wages Act. “I have to go into the matter, as I am not aware of the ministry’s position and the court rulings in the matter so far,” he said. Yesterday, former Supreme...

Manmohan turned down Sonia Gandhi's request He agreed to an index-linked rise in current Wages Expressing distress at the Prime Minister's refusal to pay the statutory minimum Wages to workers under the employment guarantee programme, a group of 150 social activists has criticised the government's decision to merely allow an index-linked rise in current Wages. They accused the Prime Minister of further undermining the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by...

A fortnight after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Wages paid under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) would not be linked with minimum Wages, Minister of State for Labour Harish Rawat today said NREGA was a flawed law, as it went against the Minimum Wages Act. Rawat told Business Standard the section in the law which contained a contradiction with the minimum Wages Act made it a flawed piece of...

In a consultation on minimum Wages organized by the Bandhua Mukti Morcha in collaboration with the Planning Commission and NMML in New Delhi on Tuesday and Wednesday , there was overwhelming consensus on the sanctity of Minimum Wages.   Speakers included Justice Shah, Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Sitaram Yechury, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Harish Rawat, Jayati Ghosh, B.D. Sharma, D Raja, Swamy Agnivesh, and Prashant Bhushan Justice Shah established that repeated Supreme Court...

For Union minister C P Joshi the failure to handle the UPA goverment's flagship programme of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) resulted in his transition from rural development to surface transport. Joshi had not acted on a letter from Congress president Sonia Gandhi to raise MGNREGA Wages and also stood in contempt of an Andhra Pradesh High Court order. Joshi was earlier seen as a trusted man...