Governor's Conference from Wed; security, sanitation key focus

Security and sanitation will be the focus of the Governor's Conference beginning here on Wednesday which will be addressed by President Pranab Mukherjee and attended among others by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The two-day conference will have a focus on internal and external security with special stress on border security in states like Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, West Bengal and Assam which share international frontiers.
The other focus includes achieving the goal of "Swachh Bharat" by 2019 on Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary, making skill development programmes effective for employment generation and financial inclusion of states.
For the development of northeast, issues related to Fifth and Sixth Schedule of the Constitution will be discussed during the conference.

Under the Fifth Schedule, the Governor of each state having Scheduled Areas therein shall annually, or whenever so required by the President, make a report to the President regarding the administration of such areas and the executive power of the Union shall extend to the giving of directions to the state as to the administration of the said areas.
The Sixth Schedule says if there are different Scheduled Tribes in an autonomous district, the Governor may, by public notification, divide the area or areas inhabited by them into autonomous regions.
Twenty-one governors and two Lt. Governors of the states and Union Territories will attend the 46th conference.

Besides the Prime Minister, Rajnath Singh (Home), Sushma Swaraj (External Affairs), Arun Jaitley (Finance), Manohar Parrikar (Defence), Uma Bharti (Drinking Water and Sanitation) and M Venkiah Naidu (Urban Development) would be among the Union ministers attending the conference.