The Chief Minister of Telangana, K Chandrashekar Rao, has decided not to attend the NITI Aayog meeting in New Delhi on May 27, and won’t be sending a representative from the state either. The meeting is held regularly to allow states to present their development plans and get the Centre’s approval. However, KCR has only attended once in the last seven years and has been skipping the meetings since 2019. He believes that attending the meetings is pointless because the Centre does not accept the recommendations made by NITI Aayog.
KCR stated that NITI Aayog recommended giving Rs 24,000 crore to Telangana for the Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya, but the Centre did not honour it. Moreover, the Centre denied the Backward Region Development Funds (BRGF) and reduced the Centre’s share in various schemes from 80-90 per cent to 60 per cent, resulting in an additional burden on the states. The state government claims that about 19.6 per cent of funds were taken away by the Centre in the form of cess, and Telangana lost Rs 42,000 crore because of it.
Therefore, KCR believes that attending the NITI Aayog meeting would not serve any purpose as the policy-making body has repeatedly failed to address the state’s concerns and cannot force the government to implement any decisions.
