Home Minister to chair North Eastern Council

The Union cabinet on Wednesday approved the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) proposal to nominate Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh as ex-officio Chairman of North Eastern Council (NEC).

NEC is a statutory body with the Governors and Chief Ministers of all the eight North-Eastern states as its member. The Minister of State, Ministry of DoNER would serve as the Vice Chairman of the council.

"NEC implements various projects through the State and Central agencies. Under the new arrangement with Home Minister as Chairman and Minister of DoNER as Vice Chairman, NEC and all the Governors and Chief Ministers of North Eastern States as Member would provide a forum for discussing inter-state matters more comprehensively and also consider common approaches to be taken in future," a government release read.

The repositioning will help NEC to become a more effective body for the North Eastern Region.

"NEC can now also perform the tasks undertaken by the various Zonal Councils to discuss inter-state issues such as drug trafficking, smuggling of arms and ammunition, boundary disputes etc," it read.

NEC was established under the North Eastern Council Act, 1971 as an apex level body for securing balanced and coordinated development and facilitating coordination with the States.