No goal is impossible if Centre, states work like Team India: PM
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said if the Centre and states work together like Team India, no goal is impossible. Chairing the 10th Governing Council meeting of Niti Aayog, Modi said there is need to increase the speed of development. The theme of the Council meeting was “Viksit Rajya for Viksit Bharat@2047’’. “We have to increase the speed of development. If the Centre and all the States come together and work together like Team India, no goal is impossible,” Niti Aayog in a post on X quoted the Prime Minister as saying. “Viksit Bharat is the goal of every Indian. When every state is Viksit, then Bharat will be Viksit. This is the aspiration of its 140 crore citizens,” Modi said.
The meeting also saw some of the Chief Ministers, belonging to Opposition parties, raise issues affecting their respective states, mainly relating to sharing of resources. The council, the apex body of Niti Aayog, includes all state chief ministers, lieutenant governors of Union Territories, and several Union ministers. The Prime Minister is the chairman of Niti Aayog. It was attended by Chief Ministers and Lt. Governors representing 24 States and 7 UTs. “We should have the aim of making each state viksit, each city viksit, each Nagar Palika viksit and each village viksit. If we work on these lines, we will not have to wait till 2047 to become Viksit Bharat,” Modi said. The prime minister also suggested that states should develop at least one tourist destination per state at par with global standards and by providing all facilities and infrastructure. One State: One Global Destination. It would also lead to the development of the neighbouring cities as tourist places,” he said. Noting that India is getting rapidly urbanised, Modi said, “We should work towards future-ready cities”. Growth, innovation and sustainability should be the engine for the development of India’s cities, he added. Modi also emphasised the need to work towards the inclusion of women in the workforce. “We must make laws and policies so that they can be respectfully integrated into the workforce,” he said. It is the first major meeting of the prime minister with chief ministers of all states and lieutenant governors of Union Territories after Operation Sindoor. PM Modi mentioned that ‘Operation Sindoor should not be treated as a one-off initiative and we must adopt a long-term approach. He said the country must modernise its approach to civil preparedness. He said that the recent mock drills have reignited the attention that civil defence states should institutionalize civil defence preparedness.
The CMs and L-Gs praised Operation Sindoor for its precision and targeted strikes which led to destruction of terror infrastructure. They praised the PM’s leadership and the valour of the Armed Forces. They also praised the efforts towards Aatmanirbharta in the defence sector which have strengthened the defence forces and bolstered confidence in our capabilities. Three southern Chief Ministers, including from NDA ruled Puducherry skipped the Niti Ayog’s Governing Council meeting. While the CM of Congress-ruled Karnataka, Siddaramaiah, was busy with “prior engagement” in the state and sent his speech to be read out in the council, Marxist veteran and Kerala CM, Pinarayi Vijayan deputed his Cabinet colleague K N Balagopal on his behalf. Similarly, Puducherry chief minister N Rangasamy, who heads the AINRC-led NDA coalition in the union territory, also skipped the event, an official source said. While AP CM Naidu heads a NDA coalition government in his state, DMK president Stalin and Congress’ Revanth Reddy lead the non-BJP ruled Tamil Nadu and Telangana, respectively. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, an ally of NDA, also did not attend the meeting.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee skipped the NITI Aayog meeting in the Capital, sources in the state secretariat said. The reason behind Banerjee’s decision not to participate in the meeting was undisclosed, they said. While Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin pushed for the Centre to share more funds with states, his Punjab counterpart argued that his state had no water to share with Haryana. Stalin, whose government has been locked in a face-off with the BJP-led Centre over the three-language clause in the National Education Policy and has approached the Supreme Court claiming that over Rs 2,000 crore was being withheld from the state because of that, urged the Union government “extend non-discriminatory cooperation” to all states, including Tamil Nadu. Speaking at the Council meeting, the DMK chief said, “It is not ideal for states in a federal democracy like India to struggle, argue, or litigate to receive the funds rightfully due to them. It hinders the development of both the state and the country.”
Making a case for the states’ share of divisible tax revenue to be increased to 50 per cent, Stalin pointed out that the 15th Finance Commission had recommended that 41 per cent of divisible tax revenue be shared with states. Over the past four years, he claimed, only 33.16 per cent of the Union Government’s gross tax revenue had been shared. “Meanwhile, the share of expenditure expected from state governments in centrally sponsored schemes continues to rise, which further strains the finances of states like Tamil Nadu. On the one hand, reduced tax devolution from the Union affects state finances. On the other hand, higher contributions required for central schemes impose additional burdens,” he said. Proposing that the states’ share be increased to 50 per cent, the DMK chief urged the Centre to seriously consider the demand. He also praised PM Modi’s vision to make India a developed country and achieve a $30 trillion economy by 2047. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, whose government is in a dispute with Haryana over the sharing of water from the Bhakra-Nangal Dam, emphasised at the meeting that his state is facing a shortage and has no water to give. The Aam Aadmi Party leader argued that, given the situation in Punjab, a Yamuna-Sutlej-Link (YSL) canal should be considered for construction instead of the Sutlej-Yamuna-Link (SYL) canal. According to a statement, the chief minister said the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers are already in deficit and water should be diverted from surplus to deficit basins.
