india

Updated: Jun 15, 2019 22:26 IST

Three chief ministers -- Amarinder Singh, Mamata Banerjee and K Chandrashekar Rao – skipped the fifth meeting of Niti Aayog’s governing council in New Delhi on Saturday.

Chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Rashtrapati Bhawan, this was the first meeting of the apex planning body since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance formed a new government at the Centre after a stellar win in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections.

The meeting is being attended by chief ministers, lieutenant governors of Union territories, Union ministers and senior government officials, among others.

Punjab CM Amarinder Singh cited ill health as the reason for not attending the meeting, and sent state finance minister Manpreet Badal as his representative.

West Bengal chief minister Banerjee expressed her inability to attend the Niti Aayog meeting in a letter to PM Modi, terming it as a “fruitless” exercise as the body had no financial powers to support state plans.

Telangana chief minister’s office said Rao was busy with preparations for the launch of his ambitious ₹80,000 crore Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project on June 21. Banerjee and Rao had earlier skipped Modi’s swearing-in ceremony on May 30.

Special invitees to the governing council who attended the meeting included Union ministers of road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari, social justice Thaawar Chand Gehlot, railways and commerce Piyush Goyal and statistics and programme implementation Rao Inderjeet Singh.

Meanwhile, ahead of the governing council meeting, former PM Manmohan Singh took a review meeting with the chief ministers of states ruled by the Congress and its allies at the party headquarters in New Delhi.