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Niti Ayog plans new way to tag those without basic facilities

NEW DELHI: The NDA has changed the government’s allocation and transaction of business rules 13 times since coming to power, in a bid to create synergies among departments working in silos, hack the dead wood in the Centre’s operational blueprint and more recently, delegate more powers to ministries.Consider some of the changes brought in: the civil aviation ministry no longer regulates production of aircraft, the Border Roads Organisation has moved from the road ministry to the defence ministry that has been allowed to purchase land up to Rs.250 crore for its projects. Enabling provisions are now in place to fast-track senior bureaucratic appointments. Ministries don’t need to approach the Cabinet for expenditure below Rs.1,000 crore.Veteran officers term the exercise as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s learning curve as he strives to make New Delhi tick the same way as he once ran Gandhinagar.“Coming from a chief minister’s office where he was in complete control for 15 years to adjust to the Government of India environment takes time. These changes in business rules represent Modi’s learning curve and reflect that he now realises he has to give more authority to ministers as only then, New Delhi will start moving,” said excabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar.The initial approach of putting ‘too much pressure’ on officials and mantris to reach office on time, for instance, also appears to have eased up, he said. Allocation of business rules were changed and new departments created in the past too. The UPA had tweaked these rules that lay out the responsibilities and turf of each ministry and the domains of different cabinet committees 48 times in its 10-year reign.In the first set of rule changes made after Modi took charge, four cabinet committees — on WTO, prices, UIDAI and management of natural calamities — were scrapped and Home Minister Rajnath Singh was put in charge of the accommodation and parliamentary affairs committees.Few may be aware that Modi imposed a new rule for all sarkari housing decisions taken by the cabinet committee on accommodation chaired by Singh. The minutes of its meetings couldn’t be finalised without the PM’s approval.By contrast, Modi’s predecessor Manmohan Singh let his defence minister AK Antony call the shots on allotment of official bungalows and quarters, as the head of his cabinet’s accommodation panel.Modi has recently eased that rule so that he is still kept in the loop before minutes are issued but no longer gets involved in ‘finalising’ accommodation decisions. This is just one of the fascinating changes that Modi has rung in, being flexible enough to relax or modify these alterations. “These changes made by the Modi government, prove that the PM is open to other points of view and willing to correct course to delegate more authority to ministers rather than get burdened by overseeing mundane details like allotments of government housing. It reflects a more conciliatory approach in his working style,” said Chandrasekhar, who is now the vicechairman of the Kerala State Planning Board.Delegation of powers has been a strong theme in the changes made in government rules, said officials. In August 2014, the government raised the expenditure threshold for seeking a nod from the cabinet committees on economic affairs and security from Rs.300 crore to Rs.1,000 crore, thus allowing ministries to take independent decisions for all expenditure below Rs.1,000 crore.