New Delhi:Former Minister of State in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan slammed PM Modi for turning NITI Ayog into a political body and backed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s outburst for not being allowed to speak on Saturday. Mamata Banerjee, who is also TMC president, left the NITI Ayog meeting midway and blasted the Centre for not allowing her enough time to speak as compared to the other Chief Ministers.
Three Chief Ministers of Congress-ruled Karnataka K Siddaramaiah, Telangana Revanth Reddy and Himachal Pradesh Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu besides Chief Minister of AAP-ruled Punjab Bhagwant Mann boycotted the NITI Ayog meeting to protest the Centre’s allegedly partisan role in the distribution of funds.
“PM Modi does not understand the importance of planning in economic policy formation. He converted the erstwhile Planning Commission into the NITI Ayog, which now functions more as a political body. We do not know what kind of work the NITI Ayog does. The PM only uses slogans like ‘Team India’ and ‘developed country by 2047’ for political gains,” Chavan told ETV Bharat.
“It was very unfortunate. Mamata Banerjee was right in protesting. After all, it was a meeting of the Chief Ministers and she should have been allowed to express her views. She was not there to criticise the Prime Minister. Whether the Centre agreed with her views or not was a different matter, but there should have been democracy in the functioning of such bodies,” he said.
According to Chavan, a former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the Congress Chief Ministers did the right thing in boycotting the NITI Ayog meeting.
“They knew what was going to happen during the meeting. Switching off the mics is not a healthy practice in democracy. A similar partisan approach was seen in the Union Budget allocations though it is different from what the NITI Ayog does. In the budget, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar were promised significant funds, but not the other states. India after all is a Union of States. Moreover, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar had been pressing for a Special Status, but what they have been given is something else. The budget allocation was just optics,” he said.
According to the former Union minister, the idea of planning had germinated in the Congress even before the country became independent. “The Congress had been advocating planning for the economy even before Independence and later India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru set up the Planning Commission to act as a think tank of the government.
Its vice-chairman used to attend Cabinet meetings. During the following decades, the Planning Commission was full of experts from diverse fields and social backgrounds. They produced outstanding work. The all-party consensus that used to be there in the Planning Commission is now gone. Even former NDA Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee did not tinker with the institution. But now, the NITI Ayog has only a few people and has become a pale shadow of the Planning Commission. The NITI Ayog seems to have become some kind of personal advisory body to the Prime Minister,” said Chavan.
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