3 out of 5 chief ministers from South India give NITI Aayog meet a miss

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s own chief minister in Karnataka, Basavaraj Bommai, skipped the event because he has been in home isolation since he tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin skipped the meeting over his father and former Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi’s death anniversary.

No space for representatives, no option for video conference

Over the last two years, the NITI Aayog Governing Council meeting has been taking place via video-conferencing.

On Sunday, however, no such option was extended to the chief ministers who were unable to be physically present in New Delhi.

No representatives could be sent either, with the Union government insisting that only the chief ministers were allowed to participate in the discussions.

On behalf of the Tamil Nadu government, Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan had requested permission from the Central government to participate in this consultation meeting.

The government, however, clarified that since the state’s chief minister was a member of the executive committee, only they could participate. It reiterated that deputy chief ministers and other ministers were not allowed to represent states in the meeting.

Meanwhile, even as KCR insisted that the meeting was a “futile exercise”, no request for representation was even made from Telangana.

Karnataka, on the other hand, had prepared a list of its recommendations and suggestions for the meeting to be submitted to the NITI Aayog, but they weren’t raised during the meeting due to Bommai’s absence.

Modi hails cooperative federalism

At a time when leaders of the southern states — including ruling parties like the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) — have been accusing the Union government of failing to keep up the spirit of cooperative federalism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was generous with his praise of it in his address on Sunday.

“India’s federal structure and cooperative federalism emerged as a model for the world during the Covid-19 crisis. The credit for this goes to the state governments, who focused on grassroots delivery of public services to the people through cooperation across political lines,” he said.

The statement came barely days after Thiaga Rajan referred to the Union government as a “colonial power” and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao deemed the Union government an “imperialist dictatorship”.

The NITI Aayog said that with India hosting the G20 Presidency and Summit next year, Sunday’s meeting assumed importance.

“The meeting will also emphasize the importance of the presidency for India to the federal system and the role of states in highlighting their progress on the G20 platform,” it said.