NITI Aayog calls meeting of state officials

The NITI Aayog has called a meeting of chief secretaries and planning secretaries of all states and Union territories later this month to align their respective plan process with the proposed 15-year vision document and seven-year strategic paper to be released later this year.

Officials said the meeting, close on the heels of inter-state council meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, would also impress upon the states to develop a outcome-based monitoring system of all government programnmes in line with the one developed by the Aayog.

The proposed governing council meeting of the NITI Aayog scheduled for July 30 has been postponed and is not most likely to be convened after the Independence Day (August 15) in view of ongoing Parliament session and recently held meeting of inter-state council. The Aayog's outcome-based monitoring system has been prepared for all infrastructure sectors, union ministries and is shown to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) on a regular basis.

A dashboard on real-time progress made in infrastructure projects and education, health and social sectors has also been developed to monitor the programmes. The Aayog also plans to complete the preparation of the 15-year vision document by December, as it wants the next Budget to be guided by the long-term development strategy. "We have planned to complete work on the 15-year vision document by December before general budget. This is the terminal year of 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17)," an official privy to the development said.

Therefore, the next budget must be guided by this document," an official privy to the development said.

Meanwhile, in a related development, the Aayog today also entered into a partnership with Intel Corporation for mentoring students in its 500-odd tinkering labs to be set up in schools and 100-odd incubation centres in colleges.

These labs and colleges will foster innovation and scientific spirit in schools and colleges and will be a focus point of building skill sets among youngsters to create solutions for social impact.

Each school will be provided Rs 10 lakh government grant for each lab and an additional Rs 2 lakh each year for five years towards maintenance and running of these labs.

So far, all the 500-odd schools where these labs will be set up in the first phase have been selected and the labs would be set-up in them by the end of this financial year. The schools include both from the private sector and also government schools.

The Aayog has also identified a list of 74 Public Sector Units (PSUs) which has been submitted to the PMO which are sick and loss-making for revival or sale. It is also preparing a list of PSUs which are due for strategic stake sale.