The NDA government has decided to constitute the planning commission with the country’s top advisory body having diluted regulatory powers. An announcement in this regard is expected soon, sources told HT.
The NDA government has decided to constitute the planning commission with the country’s top advisory body having diluted regulatory powers. An announcement in this regard is expected soon, sources told HT.
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The all powerful plan panel in its new avatar will be a think tank with powers to implement the ideas approved by the Prime Minister’s office.
Its regulatory over-reach witnessed during previous UPA regime would end but it would remain a tool with the PMO to monitor functioning of ministries and state governments, a senior government functionary said.“A powerful PMO always has an empowered planning commission”.
“We have started the consultation process on annual plans with the state governments and the meeting with the chief ministers will start once the new deputy chairperson is appointed,” a plan panel official said.
Government sources said the Prime Minister’s office has already indicated at the constitution of the plan panel and have asked panel’s member secretary Sindhushree Khullar to start the preparatory work.
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All advisors in the panel have been told to initiate appraisal of the new proposals announced in the budget with the ministries. Once the panel will clear a proposal, the finance ministry will release funds to implement them.
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All advisors in the panel have been told to initiate appraisal of the new proposals announced in the budget with the ministries. Once the panel will clear a proposal, the finance ministry will release funds to implement them.
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“Unlike popular perception there is no reduction in my work. In fact, it has increased as the ministries I deal with are asking for more inputs from us,” said a senior plan panel advisor.
Another advisor quipped that the ministries were pushing for faster appraisal of proposals so that they can seek funds from the finance ministry at the earliest. “Performance appraisal of bureaucrats has been linked with push to new proposals of the NDA government and they want approvals fast,” he said.
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The panel officials say the government has given them a window of just four months as process for the next budget would start in the month of December.
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.
