The meetings of eastern and central zonal councils, which facilitate the Centre and the states to cooperate and exchange ideas and experiences and find ways how to check destructive forces, will be held on January 16 and 19 respectively.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh will preside the meetings of eastern and central zonal councils to be held in Patna and Lucknow respectively.
Chief Ministers of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha will take part in the Patna meeting while in Lucknow, Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will participate.
During the UPA regime, most of the Central Zonal Council meetings as well as Zonal Standing Committee meetings took place in Delhi.
The states have been divided into five zones and each zone has its council comprising of Chief Minister, two ministers and Chief Secretary of each state as its members.
The zonal councils are headed by Union Home Minister and each zone nominates one CM as its vice-chairman on the basis of rotation.
The Zonal Councils provide a forum where irritants between Centre and states and amongst states can be resolved through free and frank discussions and consultations.
Being advisory bodies, there is full scope for free and frank exchange of views in these meetings. Though there are a large number of other fora like the National Development Council, Inter State Council, Governor's/Chief Minister's Conferences and other periodical high-level conferences held under the auspices of the Union government, the Zonal Councils are different, both in content and character.
They are regional fora of cooperative endeavour for states linked with each other economically, politically and culturally.
Being compact high-level bodies, specially meant for looking after the interests of respective zones, they are capable of focusing attention on specific issues taking into account regional factors, while keeping the national perspective in view.
The main objectives of setting up of Zonal councils are bringing out national integration; arresting the growth of acute state consciousness, regionalism, linguism and particularistic tendencies; enabling the Centre and the states to cooperate and exchange ideas and experiences and establishing a climate of cooperation amongst the states for successful and speedy execution of development projects.
