Tamil Nadu government mulling over abolition of State Planning Commission

By convention, the incumbent Chief Minister, C. Joseph Vijay, is the ex-officio Chairperson of the SPC. File | Photo Credit: ANI It is likely to be curtains for the Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission (SPC), a body formed 55 years ago.The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam-led government has not filled the posts of Vice-Chairperson and full-time members of the SPC after the resignation of the team appointed by the previous DMK government. By convention, the incumbent Chief Minister, C. Joseph Vijay, is the ex-officio Chairperson of the SPC. The Chief Secretary (M. Sai Kumar) and the Finance Secretary (M. A. Siddique) are ex-officio members. At present, the body has only an IAS officer as the Member-Secretary.The idea is “to abolish” the concept of the Planning Commission, says a senior official. As its “only contribution” is to provide policy inputs, the government is considering subject-specific committees of experts, he says.To cite an example, the government has put in place a committee, chaired by former Deputy Chairman of the now-abolished Union Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, to recommend measures to strengthen own-tax and non-tax revenues; improve buoyancy; plug leakages; and increase fiscal self-reliance. Instead of having a standing body of experts, the TVK government hopes to derive more benefits by tapping, through different committees, into the services of various experts, according to sources. The plan to do away with the SPC was first announced by the AIADMK government in March 2017. It was stated then that the SPC would be replaced with the State Development Policy Council (SDPC) to advise the government on policy coherence and formulation of programmes to guide the development of the State. The SDPC came into being in April 2020. Three months after the DMK returned to power in May 2021, the SDPC was rechristened as the SPC. The content posted on the SPC website reveals that the SPC serves “as an apex advisory body which provides evidence-based policy guidance to promote holistic growth and development in the State”. In addition to the SPC, the services of the Department of Economics and Statistics (DoES) and the Department of Evaluation and Applied Research (DEAR) are utilised by the government for policy advice. When the SPC was conceived in the early 1970s, the country was in the mode of planned development. Then, the new body’s brief was to assess the State’s resources and formulate a plan for their most effective and balanced utilisation, as reported by The Hindu on April 7, 1971. E.P. Royappa was made the Vice-Chairman after he was ousted from the post of Chief Secretary. After one more transfer, Royappa challenged the validity of his transfer in the Supreme Court, but lost his case.There had been instances of civil servants heading the SPC: V. Karthikeyan in 1983 and C.V.R. Panikar in 1985. However, after M. Karunanidhi of the DMK came back to power in January 1989, the practice of naming the incumbent Chief Minister as the ex-officio head was revived. This has been the practice since then. Several leaders such as K.A. Mathiazhagan (1974), V. Ramaiah (1976), Kovai Chezhian (1978), M. Muthuswami (1983), V. R. Nedunchezhian (1992-the then Finance Minister too), and C. Ponnaiyan (2020) were made Vice-Chairpersons. In 2011, it was the turn of veteran civil servant Santha Sheela Nair to hold the post of Vice-Chairperson. Published - September 06, 2026 04:33 pm IST