PM to meet NITI Aayog members

Mukesh Ranjan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 26

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet NITI Aayog members on Thursday to firm up the roadmap for dismantling the Five-Year Plan process and replace it with three layers of development process — vision document for 15 years, strategy paper for seven years and three years of action plan.

Sources said the advisory panel was on job to work out the three documents but a meeting with the PM would give them the “political direction”. As the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) comes to an end, the Centre has decided to convene a meeting of the chief secretaries and secretaries of planning boards of all states tomorrow to explain them the “paradigm shift” in the development process.

A senior NITI Aayog official said: “As the Prime Minister has tasked us to evolve a new system of conceptualising, assigning and executing developmental agenda in the country, we need to take states on board in the transition from the old five-year plan model to the new one. It is a fact that unless states do their bit, Centre on its own can’t deliver goods and services to the people.”

Sources said as the revenue for both the Centre and states was predictable given the fact that the government had accepted the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission and the same would exist till 2020, the action plan for three years (2017-20) would guide all governments in their endeavour to implement entire gamut of developmental activities.