NITI Aaayog Cuts No of Divisions to 15
Yogima Sharma
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New Delhi
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NITI Aayog has halved the number of divisions in the organisation to 15, a move aimed at rationalisation that comes after the premier think tank reduced its staff by 60%.An official notification dated October 6 shows that the Aayog will have only 15 verticals created by merging some of the less important divisions, doing away with those where there was little work and renaming others to reflect the focus areas of the Narendra Modi-led NDA government.
The Aayog had last month done away with a large number of employees of its predecessor, the decades old Planning Commission, to bring down the overall strength of the institution to less than 500.
Most of the officials that ET spoke to said on the condition of anonymity that the institution is only doing the assignments given to it from time to time mostly by the Prime Minister's Office.
Since there is no day-today work assigned to the Aayog, there is no need of dedicated divisions for all sectors, they said.
“The work area of the Aayog is vast but there is no concrete routine work that we are required to per form. So far we have been only assisting the subgroups and the task forces on some subjects and once that gets over there will not be much work,“ said a senior government official at the Aayog, requesting not to be identified.
As per the notification, a dedicated division of poverty estimation and data analysis has been set up while skill development has been added to education and labour, which have been merged into one division.
Likewise, infrastructure division, which was the most popular division during the previous government's tenure, has been merged with transport and tourism while land resources has been added to agriculture division.
Citing the example of the three sub-groups set up under the governing council of the Aayog, another official said that since work has been completed on all of them the officials concerned are waiting to get some fresh assignment to be delivered in a timebound manner.
A third official of the Aayog said that despite the focus on cooperative federalism most of the states and almost all central ministries are not heeding the advice of the Aayog, making it difficult for the institution to deliver on time.
Source: Economic Times, 14-10-2015
The Aayog had last month done away with a large number of employees of its predecessor, the decades old Planning Commission, to bring down the overall strength of the institution to less than 500.
Most of the officials that ET spoke to said on the condition of anonymity that the institution is only doing the assignments given to it from time to time mostly by the Prime Minister's Office.
Since there is no day-today work assigned to the Aayog, there is no need of dedicated divisions for all sectors, they said.
“The work area of the Aayog is vast but there is no concrete routine work that we are required to per form. So far we have been only assisting the subgroups and the task forces on some subjects and once that gets over there will not be much work,“ said a senior government official at the Aayog, requesting not to be identified.
As per the notification, a dedicated division of poverty estimation and data analysis has been set up while skill development has been added to education and labour, which have been merged into one division.
Likewise, infrastructure division, which was the most popular division during the previous government's tenure, has been merged with transport and tourism while land resources has been added to agriculture division.
Citing the example of the three sub-groups set up under the governing council of the Aayog, another official said that since work has been completed on all of them the officials concerned are waiting to get some fresh assignment to be delivered in a timebound manner.
A third official of the Aayog said that despite the focus on cooperative federalism most of the states and almost all central ministries are not heeding the advice of the Aayog, making it difficult for the institution to deliver on time.
Source: Economic Times, 14-10-2015
