Rajnath to chair Southern Zonal Council meet in Vijayawada

The 26th meeting of the Southern Zonal Council, a forum for the Centre and the states to cooperate and exchange ideas and experiences and find ways to check destructive forces, will be held in Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh tomorrow.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will preside over the meeting to be attended by Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana and Puducherry.
Issues of Inter-State and Centre-State cooperation and coordination have been flagged for this meeting, including coastal security, peninsular region industrial corridor, introduction of peninsular tourism trains, finalisation of inter-state reciprocal transport agreement, curbing the use of unacceptable levels of pesticides in fruits and vegetables, and maintaining uniform standards of nursing courses, etc.

Some other substantial issues of Centre State and Inter-State matters are also likely to be raised by member states in the Council.
Common interest pertaining to infrastructures, health, security, social welfare, linguistic minorities, border disputes etc., may be discussed and action taken.
Issues related to regional development of infrastructure for giving a boost to urban housing sector, construction of bridges, issuance of biometric identity cards and card-readers to fishermen are likely to be discussed at tomorrow's meeting.

The states have been divided into five zones and each zone has its council comprising the chief minister, two ministers and the chief secretary of each state.

The zonal councils are headed by the Union Home Minister and each zone nominates one chief minister as its vice-chairman on rotation basis.
The zonal councils provide a forum where irritants between the Centre and states and amongst the states themselves can be resolved through free and frank discussion and consultations.
Being advisory bodies, there is full scope for free and frank exchange of views at these meetings.
Though there are a large number of other fora like the National Development Council, Inter State Council, Governor's and Chief Minister's Conferences and other periodic high-level conferences held under the auspices of the Union government, the zonal councils are different, both in content and character.

Being compact high-level bodies specially meant for
looking after the interests of the respective zones, the zonal committees are capable of focusing attention on specific issues taking into account regional factors even as the national perspective is kept in view.
Among the main objectives behind the setting up of zonal councils was promoting national integration, arresting the growth of acute state consciousness, regionalism, linguism and particularistic tendencies and establishing a climate of cooperation between the states for successful and speedy execution of development projects.
The meeting of each zonal council needs to be held once in a year to iron out the differences between the governments on issues of development concerning regional interest and national programmes.

However, meetings of most of the zonal councils were quite infrequent during the past. Given the great potential of these institutions in resolving regional and inter-state issues through their consultative mechanism, the present government immediately after coming to power decided to revive and further strengthen these fora.
Inter State Council Secretariat, which looks after the work of Zonal Council since 2011, was instructed to take on the preparatory work to complete meetings of all Zonal Councils, pending for years, by the end of 2015.
It was a challenging task as it mandatorily required holding of all the meetings of standing committees of these zonal councils prior to the Councils' meetings. It called for immense coordination and networking to have all the states to meet on the table under the chairmanship of the Union Home Minister for each of these zonal councils.

State elections, natural calamities, law and order problems and such other pressing situations, more often than not, stymied the execution of this task but the government machinery rose to the occasion and pulled it off.
With completion of this meeting of Southern Zonal Council which is last in the series of the Councils' meetings this year, all the meetings of the Zonal Councils will be completed as committed by the government.