PM Modi chairs NITI Aayog meet on agriculture, NEP; Telangana CM boycotts, says 'no constructive purpose'

NITI Aayog's seventh Governing Council meeting, which is being chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi began in Delhi on Sunday.

The agenda of the Niti Aayog meeting includes achieving self-sufficiency in oilseeds and pulses and agri-communities, National Education Policy and crop diversification, including other things.

This is the first physical meeting of the Council since July 2019.

The Council, the apex body of NITI Aayog, includes all chief ministers, lieutenant governors of Union Territories and several Union ministers. The prime minister is the Chairman of NITI Aayog.

Union ministers Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, S Jaishankar and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Assam, among others are attending the meeting.

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Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has boycotted the meeting. He said that the Centre's think tank and its meetings serve "no constructive purpose" and that participating chief ministers are given "hardly a few minutes" to express their views.

In a letter to Modi, KCR expressed his anguish against the central government for not giving states the "flexibility to design and modify schemes based on their needs".

With PTI inputs