CM to skip ‘fruitless’ Niti meet, calls body financially toothless

Kolkata: Chief minister

Mamata

Banerjee will not attend the the Niti Aayog meeting to be presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 15 because it would be a “fruitless” exercise for her.

Conveying her decision in a letter to the PM, she has said that Niti Aayog, unlike the erstwhile Planning Commission it replaced, has “no financial powers” and therefore cannot support State Plans. “It is fruitless for me to attend the meeting of a body that is bereft of financial powers,” she has said.

Banerjee has instead requested Modi to focus on Inter-State Council, a constitutional body, and augment its functions as the country’s nodal entity. “This will deepen cooperative federalism and strengthen federal polity,” the CM writes. She has also urged the PM to amalgamate National Development Council with Inter-State Council.

This is not the first time Banerjee is skipping a Niti Aayog meeting. She has done so at least on three earlier occasions between 2015 and 2018 following differences with the Modi government’s policies or during drawing up of the 15-year Vision Document for the country.

However, the ground the CM has mentioned in her letter to the PM seems fundamental enough to further widen the rift between the state and Centre ahead of the 2021 assembly polls.

Those who have voted for BJP in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha polls in Bengal may not like Banerjee’s “confrontationist” stance, but political observer Biswanath Chakraborty sees in it a long-term political strategy by Banerjee to emerge as Modi’s alternative at the national level. “There were occasions when Union ministers announced projects without the Planning Commission’s approval. In fact, Mamata Banerjee had also announced 14 such projects for Bengal during her tenure as railway minister. Now, she is pining for the Planning Commission,” Chakraborty said.

The political angle becomes apparent as the CM has raised in her letter an issue that is emotive for the people of Bengal. “You are aware that the predecessor of the Planning Commission was the National Planning Committee formed by none other than Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1938,” she writes.