PM Modi will meet his Cabinet on last Wednesday of every month
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's review meeting with his council of ministers in the last week of every month will now be a regular feature.
He had held the first such meeting in December and at the second yesterday, told his ministers that they would now meet every month. The last Wednesday of each month will be set aside for the exercise.
On Wednesday evening, the Prime Minister met his ministers to review the implementation of cabinet decisions on five ministries. He asked the ministers to speed up implementation and to showcase policy initiatives better.
The cabinet secretary made power point presentations on cabinet decisions and the status of their implementation. Each minister then had to share follow-up plans on speeding up or improving implementation.
All but seven of his ministers attended yesterday's meeting at the parliament library building, which ended with dinner.
The five ministries that the Prime Minister reviewed yesterday were, agriculture, food, chemical and fertilisers, rural development and water resources
The longest time was spent on discussing the Agriculture ministry headed by Radha Mohan Singh of the BJP. The PM asked the ministry to think out of the box and execute policies and initiatives to provide relief to and improve the condition of farmers.
He had several queries on agricultural markets and irrigation projects and also reviewed the cane and sugar sector, in a crisis for some time now.
He asked the agriculture and food ministries to work overtime to create a better stock of pulses to check another shortage or price hike and discussed direct payment of wages under the Mnrega scheme and national rural livelihood schemes.
During her review, the PM directed water Resources Minister Uma Bharti to ensure greater involvement of the common man in the Clean Ganga project.