Scrapping plan panel was Modi's sour grapes moment: Jairam

The Modi Government at the Centre replaced the panel with the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog ostensibly to empower the States.

Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh has alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped the Planning Commission due to the criticism he faced from the body while he was Gujarat Chief Minister. File photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped the Planning Commission (PC) due to the criticism he faced from the body while he was Gujarat Chief Minister, former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh has alleged.

In an exclusive interview to The Hindu , he claimed, "Every time he (Modi) came for the annual plan discussion, PC would point out that Gujarat lagged behind Kerala, Tamil Nadu and others in the social sector. Its progress on education, health, nutrition and sanitation were markedly inferior compared to other States. Now, without giving any thought to it, he has centralised all resource allocation with the Finance Ministry (FinMin) which is far more politicised."

Mr. Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014.

After coming to power at the Centre last year, the National Democratic Alliance Government decided to replace the Planning Commission with the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, ostensibly to empower the States. The debut meeting of the NITI Aayog on Friday was presided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Mr. Ramesh, who worked in PC for eight years, added that weaker States would suffer. "Nobody knows what will happen to the Gadgil-Mukherjee formula (for determining allocation of central assistance) or special category states. There's no doubt that PC needed reform and it would have been worth his while if the prime minister had consulted the President (Pranab Mukherjee, who was PC's deputy chairman) or our former Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh, also a former deputy chairman)."

"The centralisation of all resources in the finance ministry is dangerous," explained Ramesh. "We need a body that is at arm's length of the executive. PC had certain independence in its functioning and has even criticised the government in the past. The allocation of resources from the centre to the states, in which PC had a very important role, is now threatened."

With resource allocation being completely under the purview of the FinMin, the NITI Aayog 's only focus is policy planning. "It (NITI) will only end up producing (research) papers and there is no dearth of thinkers in India," opined Mr. Ramesh.