5 of 10 policy panel members from states

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in Lok Sabha that he would consult chief ministers on Sunday to discuss the framework of the new body to replace planning commission. The PM is likely to discuss revisiting of Gadgil-Mukherjee formula for deciding the method by which the states receive funds from the Centre, sources said.

Updated on: Dec 6, 2014, 24:28:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in Lok Sabha that he would consult chief ministers on Sunday to discuss the framework of the new body to replace planning commission. The PM is likely to discuss revisiting of Gadgil-Mukherjee formula for deciding the method by which the states receive funds from the Centre, sources said.

The new body to replace the panel is likely to have 10 members with half of them being representatives of the states.

The Gadgil-Mukherjee formula which follows a six-point criteria including population and per capita income had been criticised for not doing justice with the states pushing for reforms.

“The issue would be discussed under the segment fund flow to the states from the Centre through annual state plans. The Prime Minister is very keen to get feedback from the states on fund flow,” a planning commission advisor said, adding that the consultation was part of PM’s cooperative federalism agenda.

Modi told members that his government has initiated a series of consultative processes with a cross-section of society, including experts, to determine the direction that the new plan panel will have.

“Our government intends to collect and collate this information to determine how the planning commission as an institution is to work over the next five years,” he said in his intervention in the Question Hour.

On Sunday, planning commission secretary Sindhushree Khullar would make a presentation of the proposed framework of the new body to be called Niti Commission, meaning a think tank to give a new direction to India on infrastructure, innovation, technology and ecology.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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