PM Modi urges states to consider January-December as financial year

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday while addressing the third meeting of Governing Council of NITI Aayog, asked the states to consider advancing the financial year to January-December. As per PM, “India is a country where agricultural income is exceedingly important, budget should be prepared immediately after its receipt for the year”. After putting forth his take, PM urged the states to take the initiative in this regard. Prime Minister blamed poor time management, for the failure of many good initiatives and schemes. Modi also called upon the state governments to work with the Centre as to build "the India of the dreams of our freedom fighters" by 2022, the 75th anniversary of Independence. He urged states, local governments and all government and non-government organisations to decide goals for 2022, and work in mission mode towards achieving them. He also pressed the idea of simultaneously holding parliamentary and state assembly elections, saying that the “country had suffered from economic and political mismanagement for long now, and that a constructive discussion had already begun on the subject”. "The Prime Minister said if the elections are held simultaneously, then political parties could just focus on them once in five years and then use the rest of the period to do serious work," NITI Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya told reporters after the meet. PM suggested that the use of technologies such as BHIM and Aadhaar would result in significant savings for the states. He called upon the states to use the GeM (Government e-Marketplace) platform to reduce corruption and increase transparency in government procurement.