Chennai: Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu questioned what sin Mahatma Gandhi had committed that the BJP government at the Centre removed his name from the Employment Guarantee Scheme. He was speaking as the Chief Guest at a public meeting organized on Thursday in Chennai, following a padayatra conducted under the leadership of the Tamil Nadu Pradesh Congress Committee, protesting changes to the Employment Guarantee Scheme and the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name from it. 

He recalled that with a humane perspective, UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh brought the Mahatma Gandhi Employment Guarantee Scheme for crores of agricultural laborers in this country. Without bloodshed and without agitations, the UPA government introduced the Mahatma Gandhi Employment Guarantee Scheme, guaranteeing 100 days of work to laborers and establishing employment as a right of agricultural workers, Bhatti stated. 

The Deputy Chief Minister said that with the new employment law brought by the BJP government, hardships have begun in the lives of agricultural laborers.