Excelsior Correspondent
JOWAI (MEGHALAYA), July 3: DoNER Minister Dr Jitendra Singh today became the first-ever Union Minister to attend the famous 4-day Meghalaya Annual Cultural Festival, “Behdienkhlam”, held every year at the small peripheral town of Jowai.
On the concluding day of the festival today, Dr Jitendra Singh spent time with the visitors from across the region who had come to attend the festival. He also showed interest in the religious rituals associated with the event.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Jitendra Singh said, while this is a festival in which rituals for seeking blessings of the Almighty are observed, he himself personally felt the most blessed for being able to be a part of it. He said, his presence in the event is also a reiteration of the high priority that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government accords not only to the development of the region, but also to promote, preserve and patronize the healthy traditional culture and civilization of the region.
Dr Jitendra Singh said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited Northeast over 30 times in a short span of four years, which is a record in itself, and many times more than the number of visits by any Prime Minister in the past. He said, the Modi Government has sought to identify with every ethnic and tribal group of the region, while the Ministry of Northeast / DoNER introduced the practice of having a rotational Camp Secretariat by turn every month in each of the eight States and this has resulted in very close affinity between the people of Northeast and the Ministry of DoNER.
It was during the Modi Government, Dr Jitendra Singh said that Meghalaya saw its first-ever train and got included in the rail map of India. Not only this, in the last four years, the law and order and security situation has considerably improved towards normalcy and now, the picturesque locales of Meghalaya are flooded with tourists, he said.
Earlier in his welcome address, O.R. Challam, President, Seinraij Jowai, hailed Dr Jitendra Singh for making history by becoming the first-ever Union Minister to attend the four-day festival which has very strong, emotional, sentimental, cultural and spiritual importance for the people living in this area. He disclosed that in March this year he had extracted a promise from the DoNER Minister that he would definitely attend this event and he must appreciate the Minister for having kept his promise in spite of the inclement weather marked by incessant rain over the last few days.
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