Abolishing PlanCom 'harmful' to India: Manmohan Singh

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursady said the country's economic policy has had "no sense of direction" after the Narendra Modi government decided to scrap the Planning Commission.

Speaking at the inauguration of a National Convention here, organised by the Indian Youth Congress on the occasion of Indira Gandhi's 98th birth anniversary, the former prime minister dismissed as "malicious" the propaganda that no development had taken place when the Congress was in power.

"Economic policy has no sense of direction and this is largely because the Planning Commission, with all its deficiencies, was a positive dynamic instrument of steering the country's economy," Singh said.

Incidentally, Singh had during his last internal meeting of the Planning Commission reportedly stressed on the need for reforming the commission in the light of changing times. He had also then tasked a member to look into the ways and means to do this. PM Narendra Modi had in his first Independence Day speech announced the abolition of the Planning Commission and later replaced it with the (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog. Economist Arvind Panagariya was made the first vice-chairman of the Aayog.

Former prime minister Singh asked his party workers to convey to the people how the government's decision to abolish the planning body has been "harmful" for the country.