New Delhi At a time when 21 Opposition parties have chosen to boycott the inauguration of the new Parliament building on May 28, six chief ministers — all of states not ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party -- will not attend the Niti Aayog’s 8th governing council meeting on Saturday.
The council, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the chairman of the Niti Aayog, includes all state chief ministers and lieutenant governors (LGs) of Union territories. It is expected to discuss the road map for a “Viksit Bharat” (developed India) around eight key themes -- MSMEs, infrastructure and investment, minimising compliances, women empowerment, health and nutrition, skill development, and social infrastructure, officials from the government think tank said.
The chief ministers who will skip the meeting are Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal, Punjab’s Bhagwant Mann (both Aam Aadmi Party), Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal (Trinamool Congress), Nitish Kumar of Bihar (Janata Dal United), K Chandrashekar Rao of Telangana (Bharat Rashtra Samithi), and MK Stalin of Tamil Nadu (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam).
Read: Niti Aayog meeting on May 27 may set the stage for Oppn talks
{{/usCountry}}Read: Niti Aayog meeting on May 27 may set the stage for Oppn talks
{{/usCountry}}Chief ministers from the Congress, the largest Opposition party that directly controls four states, are expected to attend.
HT tried to reach out to BJP leaders for a comment, but couldn’t get it immediately.
In a letter to the Prime Minister on Friday, Kejriwal said that he was “boycotting” the meeting in protest against the “undemocratic and unconstitutional” May 19 ordinance that restored control over services in the national capital to the Centre under the LG, effectively nullifying a Supreme Court order that handed over control of services, barring police, public order and land, to the elected government.
“After an eight-year struggle, the people of Delhi won in the Supreme Court, and in just eight days, you overturned the Supreme Court’s order by passing an ordinance. So, if any officer of the Delhi government fails to work, the elected government chosen by the people cannot take any action. How will such a government function? It is being made completely powerless,” Kejriwal said in the letter.
He wrote that the action amounted to a “brazen disregard” for the Constitution, and a mockery of cooperative federalism. “People are saying that we should not attend tomorrow’s NITI Aayog meeting. Hence, it is not possible for me to attend the meeting tomorrow,” the Delhi CM added.
Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party colleague, Bhagwant Mann, on his part, said that he would stay away from the governing council meeting because the Union government was ignoring issues “related to farmers”. “The Centre has withheld Rural Development Fee (RDF) amounting to ₹4,000 crore, reduced the RDF rate, stopped mandi tax, delayed goods and services tax (GST) compensation, and shifted some sanctioned projects to other states,” AAP’s Punjab chief spokesperson Malvinder Singh Kang said, justifying the move.
In West Bengal, Trinamool Congress leaders said that CM Mamata Banerjee will not be at the meeting. However, they said that she proposed the names of finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya and chief secretary HK Dwivedi as her representatives. But the Centre replied that only chief ministers could attend, they added.
“Niti Aayog is a vague organisation unlike the Planning Commission which it replaced. Can anybody remember what decisions were taken at the last Niti Aayog meeting and what was implemented? The Centre takes all its decisions without consulting the states,” TMC’s state vice president Jay Mazumdar said.
In Patna, senior members of the Bihar cabinet said that Nitish Kumar expressed his inability to attend because of “prior commitments”, and said that they were yet to hear back from the Union government if someone else could take his place. “The state government has written a letter to Government of India requesting to depute some senior minister in his place but we are yet to get any response,” said Bihar finance minister Vijay Kumar Chowdhary.
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According to officials in the Telangana CM’s office,Bharat Rashtra Samiti president and Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will also not attend the meeting since he has a scheduled meeting with Kejriwal in Hyderabad on Saturday. Their meeting is part of a campaign by Kejriwal against the services ordinance for which he has been meeting leaders of Opposition parties asking for their support in blocking the ordinance when it comes in the form of a bill in Parliament.
Meanwhile, officials in Tamil Nadu said chief minister MK Stalin will not be at the meeting as he is on a three-day trip to Singapore and Japan.