NEW DELHI: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Andhra Pradesh chief minister emerged as the two most tough-talking leaders at the annual general council meeting of the Niti Aayog on Sunday, with Trinamool Congress chief and Telegu Desam Party chief respectively, bringing up contentious issues of the Centre not following the spirit of “cooperative federalism” and “interfering” in matters of the state.

Banerjee said that states should be setting the agenda rather than the Centre drawing it up since it is for states to implement them. She told reporters, “Why does the Centre set the agenda for the meeting… state is the implementing authority… different states have different issues… they know the problems of implementation… Centre should prepare the agenda in consultation with the states.”

"Centre sets the policy but we are the implementing authority. Cooperative Federalism should be followed. Don't interfere in issues of the states unnecessarily,” she added.

Naidu, while raising contentious issues like GST and demonetisation harped on special category status for Andhra Pradesh. The Bihar CM also revived the demand for special category status for his state in the same breath.

Naidu’s demand to use the 1971 Census instead of 2011 Census as reference for 15th Finance Commission and his call for not penalising performing states for controlling its population growth, received a strong support from Banerjee. After the meeting, the Bengal CM told reporters that, she had also taken up the issue. “I spoke on 15th Finance Commission terms of reference… on population-based allotment... States like ours – Bengal and the southern states who have implemented population control are going to lose in that scheme of things for successfully implementing population control… that’s not fair.”

Naidu proposal to converge MNREGA with agriculture was widely accepted by many of the other chief ministers including from Banerjee and it finally saw Prime Minister set up a committee with CMs Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Sikkim , Gujarat , Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal to work together to make recommendations on a coordinated policy approach to the two subjects of "agriculture and MNREGA," including both pre-sowing, and post-harvest phases, it is learnt.

Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao also backed Naidu’s idea of convergence between agriculture with MNREGA schemes.

With Ayushman Bharat, a health scheme being on the agenda, Banerjee said, “in Bengal the free health scheme is already operational,” so it will not serve any new purpose and also snubbed the Centre on “doubling income of farmers” as in her state she said at the meeting, that farmers are already getting three times their income, but that the “Kisan credit card is not doing well and that banks are not giving loans to farmers.”

She continued with her plea to restructure Bengal’s debt burden. “This year also we are paying Rs 46000 crore interest,” she said.

During his speech, Prime Minister is learnt to have hailed power reforms being taken up in Andhra, especially, the 100% LED bulbs usage in Vizag and asked other states to learn from the experience.

The PM also mentioned the “global warming” issue raised by Banerjee. She had raised it in the recent context of deaths due to lightning strikes that gone up across the country, especially in Bengal. She suggested that experts should be consulted to deal with global warming.

