Disbanding Planning Commission and Setting up NITI Aayog

Almost one of the first acts of the NDA government was

to scrap the Planning Commission and set up in its place

the NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog. The Independent Evaluation Office submitted an assessment report to Prime Minister Modi on May 29, 2014, recommending that the Planning Commission be replaced with a ‘control commission’. The union cabinet scrapped the Planning Commission in August 2014. On January 1, 2015, after a cabinet resolution was passed to replace the Planning Commission with the NITI Aayog, the formation of the NITI Aayog was announced by the Government of India. This body, too, like the Planning Commission was established by executive order. The NITI Aayog was conceived as a policy think tank of the Government of India. Its aim was to enhance cooperative federalism by fostering the involvement and participation of state governments of India in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach. It, unlike the Planning Commission, would not allocate funds to the states for different programmes. NITI Aayog comprises, in the main, the Prime Minister of India as the chairperson and a governing council comprising the chief ministers of all the states and Lt. governors of union territories.