60% of plan panel staff to be posted in ministries

Taking first major steps to scrap the Planning Commission, the government would be posting about 60% of the panel employees in different ministries and the Independent Evaluation Office that suo-motto recommended scrapping of the Planning Commission would be wounded up.

Updated on: Sep 4, 2014, 21:19:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Taking first major steps to scrap the Planning Commission, the government would be posting about 60% of the panel employees in different ministries and the Independent Evaluation Office that suo-motto recommended scrapping of the Planning Commission would be wounded up.

IEO’s director general Ajay Chibber was sacked last Friday and the remaining staff in the organisation will have to go back to their parent departments, sources said, adding that the few consultants hired would be provided an option to work with different departments.

The evaluation office was an attached office of the panel and was set up in October 2013. However, its recommendation to scrap the panel had not gone down well with the panel officials who termed it breach of its terms of reference. The panel also told the Prime Minister’s Office which okayed Chibber’s sacking that there was already a project evaluation wing in the commission called Project Evaluation Office (PEO) and therefore the IEO was not required.

The government sources said that another important attached office of the panel the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is likely to be brought under the administrative control of the Information Technology ministry headed by Ravi Shankar Prasad once the panel is fully dismantled. However, the PMO would monitor Aadhaar enrollment and its other functions.

Similarly, the Rainfed Authority would report to the agriculture ministry and Institute of Applied Manpower Research to the Labour Ministry. “The idea is that these bodies should be under domain ministries,” a source said.

The government has found a solution to the biggest hurdle in dismantling the panel --- its 1,000 employees. Over 60% of them would be posted in different departments and remaining would work under the proposed multi-member think tank whose final shape is yet to be decided.

Official sources said that those in the state plan and proposal appraisal divisions would report to the Expenditure Department of the Finance

Ministry, which has been given the job to allocate funds to the state governments. Those dealing with ministries would be posted with these ministries.

“Some of the remaining domain experts and old hands in the commission would work with the new think tank,” a senior government functionary said, adding that a Cabinet note for the same has been circulated.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced scrapping of the Planning Commission in his Independence Day speech and had sought people’s suggestions on the framework of the new body.

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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