New Delhi:
Former commerce minister and Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma on Sunday dubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's move to arbitrarily dissolve the Planning Commission as 'undemocratic' and warned that such a step taken by his government will have long term implications, thereby, hurting the Centre-state relations.
"It's ironic that the Prime Minister has called a meeting of the Chief Ministers to discuss the future of the Planning Commission, four months after he had arbitrarily announced the disbanding of the commission, which was undemocratic, which strikes at the very roots of India's federal polity,' Sharma told ANI here.
Highlighting the efficacy of the Planning Commission's contribution, the senior Congress leader criticized the government for not holding consultations with the states and also not holding a meeting of the National Development Council before arriving at a decision.
"After all, the Planning Commission which was established in 1950 has made a notable contribution and the Planning Commission was also meant to be seeing the allocation of resources to the states. So, without consulting the states, without consulting the Chief Ministers, without having convened a meeting of the National Development Council, the Prime Minister just announced this," he said.
Sharma suggested that a decision to totally do away with an important structure like the Planning Commission should not have been taken and added that a re-orientation could have been looked into.
"What the Planning Commission needed perhaps in the changed environment could be a re-orientation. With renaming, dismantling (it) is unwarranted. It's half-baked and dangerous, and in the long-term it is going to affect the centre-state relations," Sharma said.
"They have just come to office six months ago, do they know more about India, they have better experience, these are all political decisions and they will boomerang," he added.
The meeting convened by Prime Minister Modi today to deliberate on replacement of the Planning Commission was attended by several Chief Ministers, including Akhilesh Yadav (UP), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana), Devendra Fadnavis (Maharashtra) Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan), Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Harish Rawat (Uttarakhand) and Oommen Chandy (Kerala).
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Jammu and Kashmir counterpart Omar Abdullah skipped the meeting.
