Telangana CM KCR not attending NITI Aayog's Governing Council meeting as a mark of protest, expresses anguish against Centre

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Saturday said that he will not be a part of the 7th Governing Council meeting of NITI Aayog. The meeting is scheduled to take place on Sunday, August 9.

"I will not be a part of the meeting of NITI Aayog as a mark of protest," said the Telangana CM in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and expressed anguish against center, for states not being given "flexibility to design & modify schemes based on their needs & conditions to ensure maximum benefit to people."

"I find the center micro-managing schemes, giving complete go by to state-specific needs which are best left to individual states," he added in the letter.

"I may affirm that NET AYOG was started with an objective of cooperative federalism recognizing that strong States make a strong nation. But after seven years of its functioning, it is now clear that thisexplicit objective was observed more in breach. The Centre's actions show that the Initiative has gone astray as States are not included as equal partners in the national development agenda," KCR wrote.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair the seventh governing council meeting of the NITI Aayog, the government's apex policy think tank.

The Centre last month had formed a committee on MSP. The committee will look into ways to make MSP available to farmers by making the system more effective and transparent.