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Empowering local governments in the planning process is a long-waited goal of the decentralized planning mechanism in India as well as it remains as one of the most-debated issues in the planning process under the federal structure of the governance. The regional social, economic and cultural diversities in the country have remained challenging to the policymakers in framing the policies for development as the planning initiatives without percolating up to the grass-root level have been actively promoting to widen the inequalities between the advanced and backward sectors and regions. At this backdrop, the Transformation of Aspirational District Programme (TADP), launched by the Government of India in 2018, looks path-breaking as it links the government’s development scheme with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to upthrust the backward districts through utilizing its potential resources …