Excelsior Correspondent
SHILLONG (MEGHALAYA), July 9: The two-day 67th Plenary meeting of North-Eastern Council (NEC) began here today with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh as the chief guest, in the presence of Union Minister for Northeast/DoNER Dr Jitendra Singh.
Governors from different North-Eastern States, including Prof Jagdish Mukhi, Dr B.D. Sharma, Dr Najma Heptullah, Ganga Prasad, K. Rajasekharan, P.B. Acharya and Srinivas Patil attended the meeting.
The Chief Ministers of different North-Eastern States were present, who included Pema Khandu (Arunachal Pradesh), Sarbananda Sonowal (Assam), Conrad Sangma (Meghalaya), Lal Thanwala (Mizoram), Neiphiu Rio (Nagaland) and Biplab Kumar Deb (Tripura).
Addressing the meeting, Home Minister Rajnath Singh highlighted that there is 85% decline in insurgency related incidents in North-Eastern region. Expressing satisfaction over the security situation in the region, he disclosed that AFSPA has been totally withdrawn from Meghalaya and partly from Arunachal Pradesh.
Rajnath Singh referred to “Act East” Policy and Government’s keenness to develop Northeast region in order to also make the “Act East” Policy more effective. He mentioned the recent meeting of the Northeast Chief Ministers convened by Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj.
Home Minister also emphasized the role of civil society and the social audit, both for the security as well as development of the region.
Union DoNER Minister Dr Jitendra Singh, in his opening remarks, said that 14 of India’s “Aspirational” districts are in Northeast and the very fact that these are among the 116 districts identified across the country, by the direct intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is indicative of the high priority and importance given to the region by the present Government.
These districts have been identified on the basis of a sound scientific criteria considering 48 vital indicators and it is envisaged that all these districts will achieve saturation point targets in all the major pro-people flagship programmes of the Government of India, like Aawas Yojana, Swachchta Abhiyan, UJALA Scheme, etc., he said.
Dr Jitendra Singh informed that the Union Cabinet on 28th March this year approved 100% funding of central projects and for the focusing of the NEC, on priority, on bamboo development, piggery sector, regional tourism, higher education, tertiary healthcare, militancy affected districts, livelihood projects, etc. He also informed that the with the 12th Five Year Plan coming to an end, the EFC has recommended extension of the schemes of the NEC for 3 years’ period from 2017-18 to 2019-20 with a fund support of Rs.3500 crore and also Rs.1000 crore for North-East Road Sector Development Scheme (NERSDS) He expressed satisfaction that the Northeast Budget had been hiked by 28.6 percent.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
