Hyderabad: KCR decides to skip NITI Aayog meet again

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has once again decided to skip the NITI Aayog meeting convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 27 in New Delhi. He has also decided against deputing anyone to represent the state at the meeting. The meeting is held at regular intervals so that the states can present their development agenda and get the Centre’s nod.

KCR had attended the NITI Aayog meeting only once in the last seven years. Since 2019 he has been skipping the Governing Council meetings. Earlier, the government used to depute state officials. KCR had stated that there was no use of such meetings. The Centre was not accepting the recommendations made at the meeting.

He had said that the NITI Aayog had recommended giving Rs 24,000 crore to Telangana for the Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya but the Centre did not honour. The NITI Aayog did not have any power to question the Centre for not honouring its recommendations.

The Centre also denied the Backward Region Development Funds (BRGF) and reduced the Centre’s share in various schemes, including the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Yojana and PM Sadak Yojana, from 80-90 per cent to 60 per cent, imposing an additional burden on the States, hence attending the meeting would not serve any purpose. The Government points out that CAG had observed in a series of reports that the States were not given funds and that the States were deprived off their due share because of the cess introduced by the Centre.

The state government claims that about 19.6 per cent of funds were taken away by the Centre in the form of cess. Telangana had lost Rs 42,000 crore because of the cess but NITI Aayog does not talk about it. Hence, the government is of the opinion that when the policy-making body had repeatedly failed in addressing the state’s concern, and is not able to force the government to implement the decisions, there was no point attending the meeting.