KCR 'NITI' to skip Aayog meet

Hyderabad: Telangana Government has decided not to attend the 7th Governing Council meeting of the NITI Aayog on Sunday. Announcing this Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao said though NITI Aayog is considered to be the government's apex policy think tank. But these meetings have lost their relevance. He said Chief Ministers are hardly given a few minutes to express their views which are not taken into consideration and for that one must sit for four hours.

Moreover, the states are not involved while finalising the agenda of the NITI Aayog meeting. The Central Government does not treat states as equal partners. Hence, it serves no purpose in attending such meetings, KCR said.

This will be the first in-person meeting of the council after July 2019 and its members include all the chief ministers.

At a press conference, KCR said that personally he was not against Modi, who was his "good friend", but it was his policies which the TRS was opposing. NITI Aayog, he said, neither has powers nor can it influence the Centre.

He said in the past the Planning Commission had a constructive role in nation building while NITI Aayog is just for namesake. Even issues like GST on essential goods, new army recruitment, growing unemployment, inflation, fall in rupee value were not discussed by it. It is a body that works at the behest of Modi, he added.

"NITI Aayog was started with an objective of cooperative federalism recognising that strong states make a strong nation. But after seven years of its functioning, it is now clear that this explicit objective was observed more in breach. Though NITI Aayog recommended grants to Telangana government for Mission Kakatiya and Mission Bhagiratha, the Centre never honoured the recommendation," he said.

He said that the Telangana Government had generated Rs 1.9 lakh crore funds and spent last year. The Centre has given only Rs 5,000 crore under the Centrally-sponsored schemes. The 15th Finance Commission also recommended Rs 6,000 crore grants to Telangana but not a single rupee was released, he said.

KCR further said that the economic policies adopted by the Union government are detrimental to the interests of the states. It has imposed sanctions on borrowings and reduced FRBM limit. While TS demanded permission for the borrowing limit of Rs 54,000 crore, the Centre gave nod to Rs 39,000 crore.