West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to inform that she won’t attend the NITI Ayog meeting in Delhi on June 15. And it’s not due to other work priorities – Banerjee is upset about the very constitution and functioning of the body.
In her letter to the PM, the Bengal CM wrote, “Given the fact that the Niti Ayog has no financial powers and the power to support the State Plans, it is fruitless for me to attend the meeting of a body that is bereft of any financial powers.”
Banerjee has often said publicly that the functioning of the NITI Ayog is very different from the Planning Commission, and that the latter was more in tune with the federal structure of the country. As far as the NITI Ayog is concerned, the states do not have any say and it does not go with the federal structure which ensures the Centre and the states work in unison for the development projects.
Banerjee wrote that this has been her experience with the functioning of the NITI Ayog for the past four and a half years, when the Planning Commission was dissolved and the NITI Ayog constituted. “The experience of the last four and a half years we had with the Niti Ayog, brings me back to my earlier suggestion to you that we focus on the Inter-State Council constituted under Article 263 of the Constitution, with appropriate modifications, to enable the ISC to discharge its augmented range of functions as the nodal entity of the country. This will deepen cooperative federalism and strengthen federal policy,” Banerjee wrote in her letter.
This is going to be the first meeting of the NITI Ayog after Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister for the second time. All chief ministers have been invited to chalk out future plans for projects at the meeting, which PM Modi will address.
