Modi holds marathon meeting with Council of Ministers

Amid his thrust on efficient governance, delivery and implementation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday held a marathon meeting with his entire 45-member Council of Ministers to emphasise these aspects.

In the meeting that lasted over 3 hours, Modi is believed to have illustrated his ideas on how to boost the economy, attract greater investment and improve infrastructure.

The discussions are believed to have centred around the 100-day agenda which Modi had asked his ministerial colleagues to set, identifying priorities and work for their implementation.

He is understood to have sought suggestions from the ministers on various matters related to governance, sources said.

The meeting took place against the backdrop of Modi's 10-point agenda which includes increasing investment, completing infrastructure projects in a time-bound manner and exploiting of natural resources, besides giving freedom to bureaucrats to take decisions and implement them.

The prime minister has already decided to empower individual ministries to take decisions and implement them speedily. In this regard, he scrapped on Saturday the Empowered Group of Ministers and Group of Ministers, a legacy of the UPA government.

Earlier, he had told his ministers to set a timetable for the first 100 days listing the priorities with focus on efficient governance and delivery and implementation of schemes and programmes.

Modi has told his Cabinet colleagues to take their ministers of state along in implementation of programmes and that he would be regularly meeting them as also the secretaries individually.

He will meeting secretaries on Tuesday.