Vijoy Prakash at the news conference in Patna on Saturday. Picture by Ashok Sinha

Patna, May 28: A Union minister and ministers and officials of Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh as well as senior officials of the Planning Commission, including its deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, will take part in the regional consultation process of Planning Commission for preparing the approach paper of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-13 to 2016-17) on May 30 and 31.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar will also attend the meet.

The approach paper charts out the major challenges of different sectors before the country and suggests plans that need to be taken up to meet these challenges.

The Telegraph on April 28 had first published the news about likelihood of Bihar getting the opportunity to host this all important consultation process for the first time.

Prominent political participants in the meeting would be Union minister of state for planning Ashwini Kumar, Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik, two deputy chief ministers of Jharkhand Sudesh Mahto and Hemant Soren and Bengal planning minister Manish Gupta. The Chhattisgarh team would be led by deputy chairman of state planning commission Shivraj Singh.

Apart from Ahluwalia, prominent participants from the Planning Commission would be its members B.K. Chaturvedi, Abhijeet Sen, K. Kasturirangan among others.

“The consultation process is very important as inputs of this exercise play a major role in drafting the approach papers of the Five-Year Plan,” Bihar planning and development department principal secretary Vijoy Prakash told reporters today while sharing details of the two-day event.

The event has been divided into four sessions. The first session would be held in the forenoon of May 30 during which participating states would put up their views about the approach of 12th Five-Year Plan and they would also come up with suggestions for meeting their expectations from the plan. During the second session, which would be held in the afternoon of the first day of the event, representatives of urban local bodies and panchayati raj institutions of five states would put forth their views.

On the second day, the forenoon session would provide the opportunity to representatives of civil society groups and senior government officials to put forth their views, whereas the afternoon session would provide opportunity to representatives of trade unions, professional bodies, educationists and academics for the same.

Regarding the preparations made by the Bihar government for presenting its views during the consultation process, Prakash said that based on the document provided by the Planning Commission prior to the event and the state’s views on various aspects of planning that need to be given more importance, the state government has done its homework and would put forth its views elaborately. He, however, refused to share the details claiming that it would be made public only after presentation before the commission.

He said after the consultation process, the state would also start a consultation process within the state and different sub-committees would be put in place for completing this process based on which the state would chart out its planning priorities for the next five years. “The state’s outlook would be dovetailed with the five-year plan prepared by the Planning Commission,” added the principal secretary.

As far as time taken in preparing the approach paper is concerned, the Planning Commission generally takes four to five months’ time after the regional consultation process for preparing the document.

Bihar, however, would not wait for completion of this process and would carry out the preparation of its own approach paper for drafting plans for the next five years side by side.