“The meeting of the full Planning Commission may meet by the end of next month to approve the Approach to 12th Plan,” a source privy to the development said.
Approach paper provides broad framework of the government policy to be pursued in the five-year period to achieve the desired growth rate. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Monday indicated that the Approach to the 12th Plan would be ready by the middle of the next month.
“Internally we have scheduled that the approach document should be ready sometime in the middle of July,” Ahluwalia had said.
After approval of the Approach paper by the full plan panel, the document will be placed before the Union Cabinet for consideration. “Since the monsoon session of Parliament is scheduled from August 1 to September 8, the document would be placed before country’s highest policy making body, National Development Council, anytime after that,”the source added.
The plan panel is expecting to complete the regional consultations with the states for finalising the document by the first week of July. The last of such consultation will be held in the first week of July with northeastern states including Assam, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. The Commission had already completed discussion on the document with four regions including North, East, South, West where out of 22 states, 11 chief ministers turned up to participate in the planning process.
In the full panel meet on April 21, PM Manmohan Singh had said: “The 12th Plan objective must be faster, more inclusive and also sustainable growth... We need to identify the critical areas where existing policies and programmes are not delivering results, and should, therefore, be strengthened or even restructured.”
