NEW DELHI: Do a fearless mid-term critique of the government’s policies, without fear of retribution; also give a policy implementation road-map till 2019 and innovative ideas for Budget 2017-18, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Union Secretaries last week.In a unique budget consultation exercise, nearly 90 Secretaries were divided into 10 groups and given the job of preparing in a month reports on as many sectoral themes, including education agriculture , governance and crisis management.“The PM wants a stringent scrutiny of all major policies, programmes, schemes and projects launched in these (above given) sectors by his government. He wants constructive criticism, so that it can improve the status of implementation of the policy and benefit the target audience. The novelty is inclusion of states and joint secretaries at Centre in the consultations as well as young officers of 2012 batch onwards. Yeh aapke anubhav ka pura nichod hona chahiye, PM told us,” a Secretary told ET on the condition of anonymity.Some secretaries were working their phones even on Diwali to discuss new policy initiatives and emerging trends and challenges in sectors the PM desires, ET has learnt. Observations made by PM will be taken into consideration.The deadline for the groups is November-end as the Budget presentation date has been advanced. A source in the Prime Minister’s Office said the PM feels experienced secretaries with co-operation of young and tech-savvy officers of the 2012 batch onwards and back-up from joint secretaries can produce a better road-map than even international consultancy firms. “PM does not want the results of the exercise to be limited to the upcoming Budget but wants them to impact policies till 2019. All policy announcements have already been done — be it Swachh Bharat, Ease of Doing Business, Digital India etc.The reports from the Groups of Secretaries should also answer ‘What Ahead in the next 2.5 years’ and implementation strategies up to 2018-19,” the PMO source told ET.The PM also stressed upon the secretaries for convergence within various ministries — and cited the example of possibility of convergence of schemes like MGNREGA through JAM and Direct Benefit Transfer. A key issue flagged by the PM to the secretaries last week was to reduce “parking of funds in states” whereby money sent by the Centre to states remained unspent Focus is on removing regional disparities and handling capabilities and priorities of states, he said.till the end of the financial year and impressing upon the states to utilise these funds at once. The PM has also asked for recommendations for new tax and non-tax initiatives for the Budget 2017-18, suggestions to harness the demographic dividend along with rising aspirations of weaker sections of the society, steps for citizen centric simplification and review of autonomous organisations, PSU’s, joint venture agreements and subsidiaries.At the meeting between the PM and the secretaries on October 27, Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha gave a presentation on the reports given earlier this year by eight groups of secretaries — suggestions from some had made it to the last budget.“The PM was all praise for the effort put in by secretaries in the last lap… ‘almost 10,000 hours in all were spent by the secretaries then to prepare the reports by showing relentless energy’ — the Cabinet Secretary said,” another secretary said.