The Madras High Court Bench here on Thursday admitted a public litigation petition challenging the Constitutional validity of Section 6 of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, which empowers the Centre to fix wages for employees without being bound by any provision of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.
The First Bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice V. Dhanapalan admitted the PIL petition after senior counsel M. Ajmal Khan, representing the petitioner R. Gandhi, submitted that the Supreme Court had upheld only the validity of notifications issued under the enactment and not the legal provision itself since it had not been challenged in any case so far.
According to the litigant, Section 6 of MGNREGA was directly opposed to Articles 14 (State shall not deny any person equal protection of laws), 16 (equality of opportunity in matters of public employment) and 23 (prohibition of traffic in human beings and forced labour) of the Constitution since it empowers the State to fix wages less than those prescribed under the Minimum Wages Act.
He pointed out that the Parliament enacted MGNREGA to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed employment in a year to one member of every household in rural areas.
Those employed under the Act were provided with unskilled manual work such as desilting water bodies, strengthening the bunds around them and raising roadside plantations.
Though the legislation was enacted with a laudable object, “it was not right to have included Section 6 which provides unfettered powers to the Centre fix a wage that could even be lesser than what was prescribed under the Minimum Wages Act,” the petitioner said.
