Telangana CM not to attend NITI Aayog meeting too

Hyderabad, May 26 (IANS) Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will not attend NITI Aayog's Eighth Governing Council meeting scheduled to be held in New Delhi on Saturday.

Rao, who last year termed NITI Aayog "a useless body" and boycotted the Seventh Governing Council meeting, will not be travelling to the national capital to attend the meet on Saturday, official sources said.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other leaders of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will be in Hyderabad on Saturday to meet KCR, as Rao is popularly known, to seek his party's support against the ordinance passed by the Centre to overrule a judgment of the Supreme Court in favour of the Delhi government in the matter of postings and transfer of bureaucrats.

The meeting is likely to be held at Pragati Bhavan, the official residence of the Chief Minister. KCR has other scheduled meetings with his ministers and officials on Saturday.

The Telangana CM may not depute even ministers and officials for the meeting. With no instructions from the Chief Minister's Office (CMO), the officials have not prepared any notes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be chairing the meeting scheduled to be held in Pragati Maidan in New Delhi with the theme 'Viksit Bharat @ 2047: Role of Team India'.

KCR has not been attending NITI Aayog meetings for last few years in protest against the Centre's "bias" against Telangana.

In August last year, he had boycotted NITI Ayog meeting as a mark of protest against the Central government's "discriminatory attitude" towards the states.

He had also shot off a letter to Prime Minister Modi alleging that the Centre is not treating states as equal partners in collective effort to make India a strong and developed country.

KCR alleged that because of lack of planning and lack of cooperative federalism, the county is passing through a most difficult phase with unprecedented problems of falling rupee values, high inflation, skyrocketing prices and increasing unemployment coupled with low economic growth.

"These issues impact people's lives and are causing a lot of concern to the nation. But these are not discussed in NITI Ayog meetings. I find the union government a silent spectator to this emerging serious scenario, often resorting to jugglery of words playing on people's emotions," the CM wrote.