By India Today News Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to chair the eighth governing council meeting of Niti Aayog on Saturday. The meeting, based on the theme ‘Viksit Bharat @2047: Role of Team India’, will be held at the new Convention Centre in Delhi’s Pragati Maidan.
According to the details, the prime minister will deliberate on issues related to health, skill development, women empowerment and infrastructure development, with the aim of making India a developed nation by 2047.
In a statement, the Niti Aayog said, “Eight prominent themes will be discussed during the day-long meeting including Viksit Bharat@2047, thrust on MSMEs, infrastructure and investments, minimising compliance, women empowerment, health and nutrition, skill development and Gati Shakti for area development and social infrastructure.”
“The meeting will see the participation of chief ministers/Lt Governors of all states and union territories, union ministers as ex-officio members, and the vice chairman and members of Niti Aayog”, it stated.
“Wide-ranging stakeholder consultations and brainstorming sessions with subject experts, academia and practitioners were held prior to the conference in order to gain well-rounded grassroots-level perspectives,” it further said.
“This 8th Governing Council Meeting is also being held against the backdrop of India’s G20 Presidency. India’s G20 motto ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’ conveys its civilisational values and its vision of the role of each country in creating the future of our planet,” the NITI Aayog said.
KEJRIWAL, BHAGWANT MANN, MAMATA TO SKIP
Meanwhile, chief ministers Arvind Kejriwal, Bhagwant Mann and Mamata Banerjee have said they would not attend the meeting of Niti Aayog.
In a letter to the prime minister, AAP supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal charged that “cooperative federalism” in the country was being turned into a “joke”.
The ordinance recently brought by the BJP-led central government has taken back the elected Delhi government’s executive control over bureaucracy that was earlier given to it by the Supreme Court through its verdict on May 11.
Kejriwal, in his letter to Prime Minister Modi, also alleged that the non-BJP governments in the country were being toppled through the use of money or threat of central probe agencies like the ED and CBI orchestrating the defection of their MLAs. He also questioned whether such action encouraged cooperative federalism in the country.
The Niti Aayog meeting will take place on Saturday and the objective of the Commission was to prepare a vision of India and further cooperative federalism, Kejriwal pointed out in his letter.
“The way democracy has been attacked, non-BJP governments have been toppled and stopped from functioning in the last few years, it’s neither a vision of India nor cooperative federalism,” he alleged.
“There is no point in attending the Niti Aayog meeting when the Constitution and democracy are being openly violated and cooperative federalism is being rendered as a joke. People are saying that we should not go to the Niti Aayog meeting tomorrow.
“Therefore, it will not be possible for me to attend the meeting,” Kejriwal said.
The Delhi chief minister has been touring different non-BJP-ruled states, meeting with opposition leaders to garner their support to defeat a Bill on the ordinance when it reaches the Rajya Sabha.
He has so far met leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thakre, Nitish Kumar, Tejashvi Yadav. Kejriwal is also scheduled to meet his Telangana counterpart and has also sought a meeting with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior party leader Rahul Gandhi.
Further, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced she would skip today’s Niti Aayog meeting.
The decision came a day after the TMC, of which Banerjee is the chief, announced that it would boycott the inauguration of the new Parliament building in the national capital.
The reason behind Banerjee skipping the Niti Aayog meeting was not known.
Mamata had earlier this month expressed interest in participating in the meeting and said that she would highlight the issue of the state which was allegedly deprived by the Centre.
She had then said, “I will be participating at the Niti Ayog meeting on May 27 in New Delhi because it is the only platform to highlight the issues of a state”.
Banerjee had asked Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar to hold a meeting of opposition parties in Patna at the end of this month to prepare together for the 2024 Lok Sabha poll. But it does not seem to be possible at this juncture.
