NITI Aayog likely to prune regional centres to six

In a surprise move, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-headed NITI Aayog has decided to close some of its regional development offices that are responsible for monitoring and conducting impact evaluatio

NEW DELHI: In a surprise move, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-headed NITI Aayog has decided to close some of its regional development offices that are responsible for monitoring and conducting impact evaluation of Centrally-funded flagship programmes of the government.
According to sources, 15 development-monitoring offices were set up across the country with headquarters in Delhi after the restructuring of the Planning Commission, which earlier had for monitoring, the  Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) and the Programme Evaluation Organization (PEO). After the Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO) came into being in September 2015, the government had pruned the list of regional centres to assess the impact of the  government’s policies on the grass root level.   

Top sources confirmed that the government may bring it down to five-six field offices and that a file has already been moved.But, what exactly happened in just one-and-a-half-years that triggered such an unexpected decision?According to sources, the NITI Aayog held a meeting with all the representatives of regional offices last week. Most of these offices are manned by officers from the Indian Economic Service (IES), an inter-ministerial  cadre that was raised in 1961 to undertake economic analysis and render advice for designing and formulating development policies, strengthening delivery systems and monitoring and evaluating public programmes.

“A top officer clearly told the meeting that status quo may not work and they may close down majority of the  offices or merge some centres with others,” sources said.
Besides the head office, the DMEO has units in three other metros — Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai — and regional officers are spread across the country, including in Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Shimla, Lucknow, Jaipur, Patna, Bhopal and Chandigarh.
Only one officer and a peon man the Guwahati office that is responsible for all the Northeastern states. Sources said after the government decision was announced to the officers in the meeting, some of them immediately decided to seek repatriation. “The final blueprint of a trimmed monitoring body with just 5-6 regional centres is likely to be out within a fortnight,” sources said.

An officer, however, had another take. “Statistics related to evaluation of flagship schemes was sent on time but the team in Delhi responsible for authoring final reports delayed the drafting. Regional offices like Guwahati have just one officer to collect data from seven states, to assess the impact and ship it to the head office. So there are administrative issues,” the officer said.

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