Opposition questions Planning Commission's renaming

The Opposition Thursday questioned the government's rechristening of the Planning Commission as "NITI Aayog".

The Congress sought to know whether the reform introduced by the BJP-led government was premised on any meaningful programme or if the move was simply born out of political opposition to the party that ran the Planning Commission for over 60 years.

"The real issue is do you (the government) have a substantive meaningful programme to reform the Planning Commission?" Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.

"If you (the BJP government) simply want to abolish it (the commission), because it is something which (Jawaharlal) Nehru created for this country and you don't like Nehru or simply because it was run by the Congress for 60 years and you don't like the Congress, that is pitiable," he said.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist said a mere change in the name would not yield the desired results.

"Mere changing this nomenclature, and this sort of gimmickry is not going to serve the purpose. Let us wait and see what the government is eventually planning," CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury said.

The government Thursday replaced the Planning Commission with a new institution called NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog that would serve as a think tank of the government.