Work cohesively for good governance, Narendra Modi tells ministers

Prime minister Narendra Modi is believed to have told his ministers that their time has started and they must utilise it to yield results, as people have elected them with great expectations. In a marathon meeting with his entire 45-member council of ministers that lasted four hours, Modi told junior ministers to participate in the governance process actively by helping their senior colleagues.

Though, no one was ready to speak on the details of the meeting, a minister said that Modi advised them to engage good people in offices and not family members. He also took ideas from ministers on how to boost the economy, attract greater investment and improve infrastructure. He also wanted to know from ministers about their 100-day agenda which they have been asked to set. He is meeting ministers and secretaries now over next few days individually.

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. On Saturday, he had scrapped the empowered group of ministers and group of ministers, a legacy of the UPA government. He also told senior ministers to take their juniors along in implementation of programmes and that he would be regularly meeting them.