New Delhi: In a move reminiscent of drastic steps taken by the Modi government to override the judiciary and particularly the Supreme Court’s orders to ensure some measure of checks on untrammelled executive overreach, like in the matter of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) to sit in the selection committee for choosing the Election Commission or on the matter of rights of a state government elected by Delhi to be able to make some decisions, it is within weeks of being told off by the Calcutta high court and the Supreme Court to pay dues to West Bengal and resume the stalled Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) programmes, that a major change to the landmark Right to Work bill – the biggest and most progressive in the world – will cut it down, with drastic implications on the finances of most states.This is being brought in *after* the SC directed payment of dues to and resumption of MGNREGA in West Bengal.https://t.co/kI5ZVkxi9u https://t.co/aCO9uSEyEb— Rajat Saha (@rajatsaha_) December 15, 2025The case of West BengalOn October 27, the Supreme Court had directed the Union government to release funds for the MGNREGA work in West Bengal which had not been happening. It ordered that the funds for this project cannot be withheld indefinitely. But the Union and State governments did little to release money.On June 18, this year, the Calcutta high court had told the Centre, that MGNREGA could not be frozen, under any circumstances and that too indefinitely. It had instructed the Modi government to carry on with any investigation into alleged irregularities, but said it does not mean that the government should stop work and not pay workers. Newsclick had reported on continued protests by workers not getting paid despite the courts having taken a firm stand.Changing the soul of MNREGAThe Government of India, is now wanting to ensure that states and Union Territories other than Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and northeastern states will have to bear 40% of the brunt, as in any other centrally-sponsored scheme. The earlier Centre-state split was 90:10. This takes away the sense of this being not just a ‘scheme’ but a ‘right’, being intimately connected to empowering rural Indians of being able to demand livelihood of the government, as an entitlement, not an endowment or being a ‘laabharthi’, (beneficiary) not contingent on munificence or whims of any government or of any election cycle.Modi government’s bids to check the checks on executive powerIn the case of Delhi government, at a time when the then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government was locked in a bitter fight over jurisdiction, the judiciary had given it some powers. On May 11, 2023, the Supreme Court had ruled that the lieutenant governor of Delhi was, according to Article 239AA, bound by the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers of the National Capital, which was the AAP government, “in relation to matters within the legislative scope of National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCTD), which included considerable ‘services’, except those related to public order, police and land. But within days, the Modi government had brought in an ordinance to quickly override any benefits from the reading of Article 239AA that the elected Delhi government could have availed of. This despite subjugating the Delhi government went against demands of the BJP when it was in opposition and its stalwarts came mostly from Delhi. In the better known and more controversial case involving the Election Commission of India (ECI), in contravention of the decision of a Supreme Court Constitution Bench in the matter known as Anoop Baranwal (2023), where the court said that it was important to make the choice of ECs above partisan politics and so the chief justice should be part of the process, the Modi government moved fast. The Modi government brought in the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioner Act (2023) and subsequently appointed former Election Commissioner, Arun Goel hurriedly, after ensuring that instead of the PM, CJI and LoP, (leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha) a minister would replace the CJI, effectively taking all power away from the LoP. This was also referred to by the current LoP, Rahul Gandhi in the debate in parliament in this session on ‘Electoral Reforms’.In February 2025, in parliament, PM Modi hit out and called MGNREGA a “monument to UPA’s failures.”MGNREGA has since, served as more than a lifeline for rural India, most remarkably during Covid-19 and severe rural distress since. It is a rights-based initiative, responding to demand from rural India. In a feudal rural structure, MGNREGA had played a remarkable role in ensuring labour got better wages from their employers as the MGNREGA wages set the floor they would accept. The provision to stop work in peak agricultural season reverses this major social shift effected by this law.