Thiruvananthapuram: State Planning Board has asked departments to identify irrelevant, under-performing and overlapping programmes and consider restructuring, merging or scrapping them.The exercise comes as the state prepares its Annual Plan for 2027-28, the first year of the proposed 15th Five-Year Plan. In a letter to departments, accessed by TOI, Planning Board member secretary Gokul G R asked them to “review existing schemes and programmes for performance and relevance”.The guidelines for Annual Plan show that launching new schemes will not be an easy option. The board wants new schemes to be limited to cases involving critical strategic priorities or emerging needs that cannot be addressed through existing programmes. Salary expenditure and recurring establishment costs will not be included in Plan proposals.The state is also planning a ceiling on its spending ambitions. The current year’s revised Plan outlay, with an increase of up to 10%, is to be treated as the provisional ceiling for the 2027-28 proposals. The final size will be decided after discussions with the finance department on the financing pattern.“Two years ago, the Plan outlay had to be cut by nearly 50%, and the situation was not favourable last year either. Therefore, the departments have to come up with realistic Plan proposals, keeping in mind the actual availability of resources. The revised budget has already placed emphasis on implementing projects realistically and the same approach will have to be followed in the coming years as well,” a senior finance department official said.The board wants departments to move away from broad, routine proposals and focus on implementable projects. Each department or agency may have to submit at least five project-mode proposals, detailing cost, implementation schedule, agency responsible and expected outcomes.The board has also asked departments to focus on employment generation and skill development, besides innovation, technology-driven governance, senior citizens, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and fisheries.“Since govt aims to transform general programmes into well-defined, concrete projects, the departments were instructed to identify projectable ideas and transform the schemes into a collection of specific, structured projects for effective implementation and robust monitoring,” Gokul said in his letter. Proposals have to be submitted by Sept 30, failing which it will be presumed that departments do not require any change in the Plan outlay.
