Niti Aayog terms CM KCR's boycott to meeting as unfortunate

Hyderabad: Within two hours of the Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao announcing his decision to boycott the NITI Aayog meeting on Monday, the institution has responded terming the decision as 'unfortunate'. An official statement issued on Saturday evening said that the Governing Council was a forum where the highest political leadership in the country at Centre and State levels deliberate on key development-related issues and agree on appropriate outcome-oriented solutions for national development. However, there was no explanation to the specific charge that there was hardly anytime given to the Chief Minister's to speak in the meeting.

The statement did not also refer to any specific points raised by the Chief Minister on NITI Aayog's recommendations being not implemented in respect of Mission Kakatiya and Mission Bhagiratha. The specific mention of how the Centre was stiffling Telangana by including the State PSU borrowings into State Government borrowings with retrospective effect, by amending the FRBM provisions.

And the most important aspect was that States were not being given any flexibility in designing and implementation of the schemes and about the micro-management by the Centre relegating the role of the States to backstage was also ignored. The statement put out a feeble argument that NITI Aayog had indeed practised a consultative process where it held preparatory meeting in Dharmasala in June 2022 in which Chief Secretary of Telangana participated. The allegation of the Telangana Chief Minister that states were not coopted in preparation of agenda is incorrect, it averred.

The statement claimed that several meetings were held with Chief Minsiters paving way for greater collaboration between the NITI Aayog and States. On the water sectory, it claimed that the Centre over the last four years allocated Rs.3982 crore under the Jal Jeevan Mission for the State of Telangana. However, the state chose to draw only Rs. 200 crore. In addition, Rs 1195 crores were released to Telangana under PMKSY-AIBP-CADWM during 2014-2015 to 2021-2022.