Narendra Modi it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary. On 31 December 2014, Modi announced that the Planning Commission had been scrapped. It was replaced with a body called the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The Planning Commission was a legacy of the Indian Independence movement, although critics said that it was slowing economic growth. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. It also reduced the extent of control individual states had over their financial allocation from the
South Asian foreign policy of the Narendra Modi government with his Nepalese counterpart in Kathmandu where two sides inked 10 agreements and memorandum of understanding including important ones regarding power trade and transmission. Once again Modi urged Nepalese law makers to adhere the January 2015 dateline for Constitution writing on the basis of consensus to accommodate views of all sections of people but this time his comments were received with mixed responses. The Nepali daily "Kantipur" on its editorial remarked that Narendra Modi breached diplomatic "Lanshman rekha" (red line) by calling it an interference in Nepal's internal mater although the English daily "The Kathmandu Post" described it as a