Tribune News Service
Kolkata, June 7
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee once again snubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said she wouldn’t be attending the Niti Aayog meet on June 15 as the body had no power and the meeting would be “fruitless”.
Citing the reasons for her decision in her latest missive to the Prime Minister, the CM said Niti Aayog was established without holding any discussion with states. Hailing the Planning Commission, she said: “The proposals to the Planning Commission came from the grassroots of every state, right from the block level and then to the district level, inclusive of panchayati raj institutions and urban local bodies. These proposals were then assimilated in the state plan which then was sent to the Planning Commission.”
Banerjee reminded the Prime Minister that she wrote to him in December, 2014, expressing concern at the abolition of the Planning Commission. “In fact I had proposed in my letter to you that instead of setting up a new body in place of the Planning Commission, it may be more appropriate to assign the decision-making responsibilities to the Inter State Council which is a constitutional entity,” the West Bengal CM said.
“Unfortunately, a new body called Niti Ayog was formed in place of Planning Commission… given the fact that the Niti Aayog has no financial powers to support State Plans, it is fruitless for me to attend the meeting”, she said.
Anti-national: BJP
- Lashing out at CM Mamata Banerjee’s latest move, the BJP on Friday said the TMC supremo was behaving like an ‘anti-national’ and trying to scuttle the growth of Bengal
- West Bengal BJP vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar said Banerjee's move was against the interest of the nation when even Congress-ruled states’ CMs were attending Niti Aayog meet
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2KAAYGC
via Today’s News Headlines
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