The Centre reorganised the NITI Aayog, leaders of BJP and its allies also got a place
The central government has reorganized the NITI Aayog. Senior ministers of allied parties have also got a place in it. Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan has been made its ex-officio member. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the chairman of NITI Aayog while Suman K Berry will be the vice-chairman of NITI Aayog. Dr. VK Saraswat, Professor Ramesh Chandra, Dr. VK Paul and Arvind Virmani have been made full-time members.
Talking about the ex-officio members of NITI Aayog, it includes the names of Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah, Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Apart from these, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Health Minister JP Nadda, Heavy Industries Minister HD Kumaraswamy, MSME Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, Panchayati Raj Minister Lallan Singh, Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar, Civil Aviation Minister K Ram Mohan Naidu, Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram, Women and Child Welfare Minister Annapurna Devi, Food Processing Minister Chirag Paswan and Minister of State with Independent Charge Rao Indrajit Singh have been appointed as special invitee members.
Let us tell you that last time Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar was among the ex-officio members. This time Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been made an ex-officio member along with Defense Minister, Home Minister and Finance Minister. Piyush Goyal and Ashwini Vaishnav were also among the special invitees last time, but this time both of them have not been included. In their place, all the senior ministers of the allied parties have been given place. This shows the increasing importance of allies in Modi 3.0.
What does NITI Aayog do?
Let us tell you that NITI Aayog i.e. National Institution for Transforming India, serves as the top public policy think tank of the Government of India. Its works include “15-year road map”, “7-year vision, strategy and action plan”, AMRUT, Digital India, Atal Innovation Mission, medical education reform, agricultural reform (Works of NITI Aayog).
It was established in 2015 by the NDA Government to replace the Planning Commission, which followed a top-down model. On 29 May 2014, the Independent Evaluation Office submitted an evaluation report to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a recommendation to replace the Planning Commission with a “Control Commission”. On 13 August 2014, the Union Cabinet abolished the Planning Commission to replace it with a scaled-down version of the National Advisory Council (NAC) of India. On 1 January 2015, the Government of India passed a Cabinet resolution to replace the Planning Commission with the newly formed NITI Aayog. The first meeting of the NITI Aayog was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 February 2015 (Formation of NITI Aayog).
