Narendra Modi wants only NCTC to be discussed at CMs’ meet

After a gap of several days, chief minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday dashed off two more letters to the Centre. One of the letters is addressed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In it, Modi has asked the PM to limit the agenda of chief ministers conference scheduled for April 16 to a discussion of the formation of National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) only and not deal with the issue in a ‘perfunctory’ manner.

The other letter is addressed to Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and it talks about the jewellers' protest against the hike in excise duty on non-branded gold jewellery.

On Tuesday, Mukherjee had hinted that the Centre might roll back or reconsider the hike in excise duty. Modi promptly registered his concern by writing to him on Wednesday. He has written that Gujarat has suffered huge loss because of the strike by jewellers.

He wrote that the jewellers' strike had caused a loss of Rs16,000 crore in Gujarat alone. The livelihood of more than 4 lakh Bengali workers in Gujarat who specialize in jewellery manufacturing had also been affected, Modi has said in the letter.

In his letter to the prime minister, Modi has demanded an exclusive meeting of chief ministers to discuss only the NCTC. He has said that he was surprised that instead of convening an exclusive meeting of CMs to discuss only the proposed NCTC, this important issue had been clubbed with a host of other matters on the agenda.