Tamil Nadu CM Stalin Urges Planning Commission to Enhance State Resources

Addressing the first meeting of the State Planning Commission in the fourth year of the present DMK government on Tuesday, Stalin, while expressing happiness over the recent report brought out by the NITI Aayog, said that he wanted the State Commission to also come up with a similar report.

Entrusting the Commission with the responsibility of holding a mega seminar in Chennai to enunciate the objectives and achievements of the Dravidian Model government by inviting experts and leading media persons to present research papers on the subject, he requested the Commission’s deputy chairperson J Jeyaranjan to publish those research papers.

Stalin said that the State Planning Commission was the first of its kind in the country, set up by M Karunanidhi on the lines of the National Planning Commission with a view to developing the State with all the necessary resources.

As a result, the State had now done away with hunger, famine, poverty, pestilence, villages sans roads, villages with no electricity, villages without drinking water supply and villages without schools, he said.

All districts were self-sufficient in resources now, making Tamil Nadu emerge as a role model for other States in the development of education, agriculture and infrastructural facilities, besides equitable growth of all departments, he said.

The Planning Commission should come up with new ideas and policy frameworks and formulate schemes for the departments that had been neglected for so long by giving special attention to them, he said.

Reiterating that the DMK government stood on its basic principles of social justice, equality, self-respect, love for language, upholding the rights of Tamil race and State autonomy, he said the development of the State should be based on those basic principles ensuring simultaneous development of industry, social change and progress in education.

Referring to the 16 reports submitted by the Commission in last March on the government’s signature welfare schemes, Stalin said he considered them as a report card of his government’s performance for they revealed a lot like the Chief Minister’s Breakfast schemes in primary schools leading to growth in the education sector.

Similarly, as the reports had said, the ‘Makkalai Thedi Maruthuvam’ (Health care at the doorstep) scheme had improved rural sanitation and improved urban job opportunities had triggered society’s overall growth itself, he said.

Every welfare scheme of the DMK government was aimed at uplifting one section of society and the Planning Commission had been providing substantial information on it based on statistics though such feedbacks were also given by the common people, he said.

But the Commission should also come up with ideas and suggestions to improve those schemes of the government and also follow them up by monitoring if their progress was on the lines enunciated by it, he said.

The Commission should also check if their earlier suggestions it gave to the government on the improvement of question papers for college students, agriculture, forests and global warming were being followed diligently, he said.