Panel plans telling PM on experts

Commission to revert to PM on inclusion of foreign experts in its consultative groups

The Planning Commission will "report back to the prime minister" on the issue of inclusion of "foreign experts" in its consultative groups for the mid-term appraisal of the Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-07).

"We have discussed with the members of the commission and will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a day or two to resolve the issue," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters just after a meeting of the internal Planning Commission.

"The issue will be resolved in a few days...the commission is unanimous," he said when asked about the views of the other members and what course of action the commission was going to take.

The meeting today was attended by Minister of State for Planning MV Rajasekharan. The members of the Planning Commission who attended the meeting were Kirit Parikh, Abhijit Sen and Sayeda Hamid. The other members are not in Delhi at the moment, said the official spokesperson.

Inclusion of foreign experts in the consultative group had encountered stiff resistance from the Left parties.

Five Left-leaning economists had threatened to withdraw from the group as a protest against the inclusion of "foreign" experts from the World Bank, ADB and Mckinsey.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) today said it was awaiting the government's response on their demand for exclusion of foreign experts from the Planning Commission bodies.

The statement by Ahluwalia, during his recent trip abroad with the prime minister, "unnecessarily blew the issue out of proportion," CPI(M) Politburo Member Sitaram Yechury said.

"We had discussed the matter with the prime minister as early as on September 18 and left it to him to take a decision," he said, adding, "we are awaiting a response" from the government.

Yechury's reaction came in response to questions after Ahluwalia said he would meet the prime minister and exuded confidence that a solution would be found shortly.

Following protests by the Left parties, some economists in the commission had threatened to withdraw from its consultative committees unless the government excluded the experts from World Bank, ADB and McKinsey from the groups set up for mid-term appraisal of the Tenth Plan, to be finalised by December end.