Nitish, 4 other CMs give Niti Aayog meet a miss

NEW DELHI: Chief ministers of five states, including Mamata Banerjee, Pinarayi Vijayan and Siddaramaiah, did not attend the 10th governing council meeting of govt's policy think tank Niti Aayog Saturday. The other two CMs who skipped the meeting were Bihar's Nitish Kumar and Puducherry's N Rangasamy, both NDA allies.Niti Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam told reporters that 31 states and UT out of 36 participated in the meeting. "This is the highest-ever participation of the governing council of Niti Aayog. We had 31 participants long long ago, maybe in the first meeting and once more. This shows that people came with a very positive bent of mind," he said.He said the five states whose chief minister's could not attend had informed in advance about clash of commitments and other reasons. Some of the prominent CMs from opposition governed states present were Tamil Nadu's M K Stalin, Telangana's Revanth Reddy, Himachal Pradesh's Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, Jharkhand's Hemant Soren and Punjab's Bhagwant Mann. Visuals from the meeting showed Soren, Reddy and Stalin interacting with PM Modi.