Taking a cue from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s suggestion “to create awareness” about Government’s development plans, the Government on Friday asked the Ministers to visit the States during Parliament’s recess and inform the people about “pro-farmer” objectives of the land Bill and budgetary initiatives. Faced with Opposition offensive on the land Bill, Parliamentary Minister M Venkaiah Naidu called a meeting of Ministers to work out a strategy to highlight development programmes of the Modi Government. The meeting was attended by 35 Union Ministers — including those from NDA allies.
After the discussion, it was decided that the Ministers would visit the States during the session recess period to highlight the Government’s initiatives, official sources said. The Parliament goes into recess from March 20. With the main Opposition Congress and other parties not showing signs of relenting on the controversial land Bill even after the Government moved the amendments in it in the lok Sabha, the Ministers were asked to communicate to the people about the objectives of the Bill which were “loaded in favour of farmers”.
It was suggested that people in rural areas be informed about the changes carried in the land Bill as passed by the lok Sabha. The Ministers are also expected to focus on the enhanced devolution of financial resources to the States in a big way when they take the Government’s agenda to the people. The NDA Government accepted the key recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission including a 10 percentage point increase in the share of States in the Centre’s tax revenue from the current 32 per cent to 42 per cent, the single-largest increase ever handed out to the States.
The meeting was attended by senior Ministers Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari, Sadananda Gowda, Ravi Shankar Prasad, JP Nadda, Chaudhary Birender Singh, Suresh Prabhu, Ananth Kumar, Harsh Vardhan, Najma Heptullah, Smriti Irani, Maneka Gandhi, Piyush Goyal Prakash Javadekar, Jitendra Singh and Juel Oram. From the allies, those who attended the meeting included Ashok Gajapati Raju (TDP), Ram Vilas Paswan (lJSP) and Anant Geete (Shiv Sena).
The Ministers discussed about how to take to the people in an effective manner various initiatives taken by the Government and convince them that a number of measures reflected in the General and Railway budgets are pro-people. The Government has been maintaining that both the Railway and the General Budgets have gone well with the people claiming that concerns of all the sections of society have been addressed while seeking to further stimulate economic recovery.
The PM has all along been asking his Ministers and MPs to regularly inform people at the grassroots to inform about Government policies and planning and thus help improve Government’s image against “Opposition’s propaganda”.