Inter-State Council reconstituted with PM as chairman; NDA allies included

The Inter-State Council, which works for Centre-State and interstate coordination and cooperation, has been reconstituted with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as its chairman, all chief ministers and nine Union ministers as members and 13 Union ministers as permanent invitees.

According to a notification issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Union ministers belonging to NDA allies Janata Dal (United), Janata Dal (Secular), Telugu Desam Party and Lok Janshakti Party are part of the reconstituted council.

Prime Minister Modi will be the chairman, chief ministers of all states and union territories having a legislative assembly and administrators of union territories not having a legislative assembly will be members of the high-powered committee, the notification said.

The vision of the council is to work for Centre-State and interstate coordination and cooperation besides creating a strong institutional framework to promote and support cooperative federalism in the country.

Members of the council include Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Jagat Prakash Nadda, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Nirmala Sitharaman, Manohar Lal Khattar, Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh, Virendra Kumar and Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu.

Permanent invitees of the council are Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, H D Kumaraswamy, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Jitan Ram Manjhi, Jual Oram, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Bhupender Yadav, Kiren Rijiju, G Kishan Reddy, Chirag Paswan and C R Patil.