NEW DELHI/CHANDIGARH: With the Aam Aadmi Party govt in Punjab, which had not only opposed the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act 2025 but even passed a resolution against it in the assembly, now notifying the new rural employment scheme, the total number of states and UTs that have notified the state scheme under the law has gone up to 19 including 7 northeastern states so far.The VB-G RAM G Act passed in Parliament amid strong protests from the opposition in December last year will come into force on July 1 replacing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( MGNREGA) framework. As the govt prepares for the rollout, an official from the rural development ministry said that they are hopeful that most states will be able to notify state schemes in the coming week as many of them are at an advanced stage of preparation.Besides Punjab, the 18 states and UTs that have notified the scheme include Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and the northeastern states – Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, Tripura and Nagaland. Puducherry has also notified the scheme.As the Punjab govt notified the scheme on Friday, it drew sharp attacks from the Congress in Punjab. The Bhagwant Mann govt had convened a one-day special session of the Punjab assembly last December which had unanimously passed a resolution against the VB-G RAM G Act accusing the BJP-led central govt of “snatching” the livelihood of the poor and Dalit labourers and had demanded that MGNREGA be restored.Earlier this week, Congress governed Karnataka announced that they will implement the new scheme in the state even as the state govt prepared to challenge the new law before the Supreme Court. The state’s minister for rural development and Panchayati Raj, Eshwar Khandre reportedly cited the decision as one taken in the “interest of the rural people, women, the deprived and vulnerable”. He added that the state will continue to fight the Union govt over funding and other contentious provisions.Meanwhile, as reported by TOI, Congress ruled Telangana which is opposing the new law in its current form is planning to hold consultations with the chief ministers of non BJP governed states especially Karnataka and Kerala to assess whether the two states would be willing to pursue a common legal strategy to protect the interests of the states.Once the states roll out the scheme, under the new framework, the law provides for increasing the statutory guaranteed wage employment from 100 under MGNREGA to 125 days per financial year for rural households. The legislation has shifted the funding patterns to a 60:40 Centre-state sharing model; 90:10 for northeastern and Himalayan states and 100% central funding for UT without legislature.The framework identifies four thematic focus areas – water security, core rural infrastructure, rural livelihoods and special works for mitigation of extreme weather events. Under these themes, the govt has notified an interim list of 318 permissible works covering natural resource management, irrigation, rural connectivity, community infrastructure, livelihood-supporting assets, climate resilience and disaster preparedness.As far as the kind of works that are probably being included in the list for the first time, officials share that two of the four thematic focus domains have been included for the first time under the scheme. Under the thematic area ‘livelihood related infrastructure’ some of the permissible works going forward would include facilities for cold storage, skilling centres and agricultural produce processing units. The special works to mitigate extreme weather events and disaster preparedness will include embankments, retaining walls, flood diversion channels, multipurpose disaster relief centres and forest fire management works.