NITI Aayog works closely with states in spirit of cooperative federalism

The aayog is helping major states amend their land leasing laws

The Centre’s main think-tank, the NITI Aayog is reportedly working on developing a growth plan for Uttar Pradesh, where the ruling BJP, came back to power after more than a decade.

According to reports, a team from the Aayog is expected to visit the state later this month to discuss the development plan with senior officials and ministers of the state government. 

However, this is not first time that the Aayog has helped a state in undertaking reforms or suggesting a roadmap for its growth. 

Infact, cooperative federalism is at the very core of Aayog’s philosophy and working. 

The Aayog which has replaced the Planning Commission of India has worked very closely with the Rajasthan state government to amend obsolete and unnecessary laws in the state. It also plans to do the same with Madhya Pradesh.

It is helping major states amend their land leasing laws and has so far successfully managed to convince couple of them to amend their decades-old land leasing laws. 
 

Madhya Pradesh along with Odisha have been working on amending their land leasing laws that would make leasing legal and would also ensure that the tenant farmer gets full legal right to compensation, insurance etc in case of crop damage without impacting the legal ownership. 

Even major opposition-ruled states according to some officials have shown interest in amending the land lease acts.

It is also working with the state governments to implement DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) in fertilisers in 16 districts of the country on a pilot basis.

That apart, the Aayog sometime back, helped in resolving more than 20 issues that the newly created Telangana had with the central government.
 

The Aayog brought together top officials from Telangana state central ministries to resolve outstanding issues.

An official statement had said around 20 important issues flagged by the state government relating to the ministries of coal and power, petroleum and natural gas, environment, forests and climate change, culture, finance and rural development were discussed in the two-hour meeting chaired by Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya.

At the end of the meeting, nearly all but two or three issues could be resolved to the satisfaction of both sides, while substantial progress was made even on issues that could not be brought to full resolution during the meeting.

“It experimented with a new approach to the resolution of issues between states and central ministries by bringing the two sides face-to-face with the vice-chairman actively nudging them towards a possible solution,” the statement had added.

Going forward, officials said that the Aayog would like to facilitate more such one-to-one interactions between Centre and state officials to resolve outstanding issues.