Niti Aayog to start consultations on 15-year vision document

Government think-tank Niti Aayog will start consultations with states and experts from next month on preparing a 15-year vision document and a strategy for its implementation.
The Aayog has invited Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, former Finance Commission Chairman Vijay Kelkar, former RBI Governors Bimal Jalan and Y V Reddy among others for the crucial deliberations, a senior government official said today.
NITI Aayog has been entrusted to prepare a 15-year vision document beginning 2017-18 fiscal, which will replace Nehruvian five year planning system followed for over six decades.
Apart from focusing on sectors such as infrastructure, commerce, education and health, the vision document will also cover internal security and defence, which were not part of the earlier five year plans.

"Besides, the consultations will also cover forming a seven-year (2017-18 to 2023-24) strategy to convert the longer vision into implementable policy as part of the National Development Agenda, which will be reviewed after three years (2019-10 fiscal)," he added.
Confirming the development, an official source said that Aayog will also formulate a three-year Action Document (2017-18 to 2019-20) that will be aligned to the predictability of financial resources during the 14th Finance Commission Award period.

"This is being done as it will help to translate into actions, government goals to be achieved by 2019," the source added.
Several committees have questioned the merit in having Plan and Non-Plan classification of government expenditure and the general view is that it has skewed allocations in the Budget and the classification should be done on the basis of revenue and capital expenditure.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced in his Budget speech this year that Plan and non-Plan classification will be done away with from 2017-18.