When PM couldn’t resist praising the next Niti Aayog CEO | India News

NEW DELHI: It was the biggest gathering of Swchhagrahis on April 10, 2018 at Champaran in Bihar. None in the audience including a battery of top bureaucrats attending the event expected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take the name of an officer and ask the TV cameramen to focus on him sitting in the audience. The PM asked him to stand up as he praised the officer’s contribution to the government’s flagship Swachh Bharat Mission.
Now, nearly 20 months after the officer, Parameswaran Iyer, who quit from government service, is back as the CEO of the Centre’s apex think tank and policy making body, Niti Aayog.
In April 2018, Modi had taken Iyer’s name at the convention of Swachhgrahis at Champaran and had praised his leadership in making rural India open defecation free. The PM had said he never got a chance to honour Iyer for his spectacular work.
Stating that he was breaking the government protocol, Modi had said, “The government officers don’t come in front as they work behind the screen. Today, I hope we have our secretary Parameswaranji Iyer, who must be sitting in the audience. He had taken voluntary retirement from IAS and had left for the US. We called him back and he came here, leaving his lavish life in the US. I urged cameramen to show him again. I took him into the government. He travelled across states and districts; cleaned the toilets. So, today when I have a colleague like Parameswaranji and lakhs of Swachhagrahis, nothing can stop us from achieving the ODF status by October 2, 2019.”
Sources said Iyer had also played a key role in formulating the Har Ghar Jal scheme, which became a major flagship programme during the Modi 2.0.
While spearheading the Swachh Bharat Mission, the 1981 batch IAS officer had introduced the concept of “PM, CM and DM” to take the mission to grass root level across states. Iyer had also for the first time introduced the “live dashboard” concept for live monitoring of the progress of toilet construction across the country. Now live dashboard has become the new norm across ministries and departments.