Babus revisit NDA govt schemes for Modi

With the BJP-led NDA government returning to power at the Centre after a decade, bureaucrats are busy culling data on the status of the Vajpayee-led NDA government programmes like PMGSY, Sarva Shiksha Abiyan, Anna Antyodaya Yojana, Golden Quadrilateral Highways and port connectivity roads.

The officers of the various ministries, who have been preparing for presentation for the new prime minister, are also working on the status report of popular programmes implemented by the NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee from 1998 to 2004, expecting that new government may be keen to know its implementation.

“As there is a high chances of Modi-led government to revive these programmes again, we are getting ready for it,” an official from the Cabinet Secretariat told Deccan Herald.

The UPA government had earlier came under severe criticisms from the BJP that the Congress-led dispensation at the Centre during its two terms had failed to push the NDA government programmes by either not allotting fund or making it crawling to either highways construction or Prime Minister Grameen Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), centrally sponsored rural road scheme.

While several ports connecting roads took years to complete, the UPA government also faced criticism for failure to push several other infrastructure projects.

Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth is likely to hold meeting with senior secretaries to the Union government on Wednesday to review their presentations for Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi about the success and failure of various schemes and projects of the previous governments in past 10 years.

Sources said Seth directed that presentations must include things like five important achievements, failures and steps the department would like to take in order to boost the country’s economic growth. He also asked all Central secretaries to write what should not have been done by the previous government besides providing “four or five practical goals/ achievements” which can be pursued “for the next five years”, if “freedom is given” to the bureaucrats.

Officials have also been asked to furnish top achievements of their respective ministry in the last one decade and the gap between the actual result and the intended plan.