NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Rediff Shopping

Shop & gift from thousands of products!   Books     Music       Apparel   Jewellery   Flowers   More..      Safe Shopping

Northeastern states demand better economic plans

Amberish K Diwanji in New Delhi

The North-Eastern Council on Friday submitted a memorandum to Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani asking that the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission be made its chairman.

Speaking to rediff.com, Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga said he had submitted the memorandum on behalf of the chief ministers and governors of the seven northeastern states and Sikkim.

"I belled the cat since no one else was willing to do it," Zoramthanga said. The current NEC chairman, Lieutenant General (retired) S K Sinha, the governor of Assam, was reluctant to hand over the memorandum, so the Mizoram chief minister volunteered.

The memorandum came out of a resolution adopted at a meeting of the chief ministers of the northeastern states and Sikkim.

Earlier, Advani inaugurated the forty-third meeting of the NEC, which was attended by all the seven chief ministers and six governors of the region, besides the governor and a minister from Sikkim.

According to a statement issued by the home ministry, another important decision reached at Friday's meeting was to hike the NEC's fund from the current Rs 50 million to Rs 500 million.

But the specific budgetary provisions will be decided at the next NEC meeting to be held in Shillong next month.

The NEC also decided to meet biennially instead of the present annual meeting. It was also agreed that while the year's first meeting, to be held by February, would outline plans and projects, the second, to be held in August or September, would review their implementation and make corrections.

The NEC reviewed the Ninth Five-Year Plan, which has two more years to go, and decided that next year's meeting would begin to look into the Tenth Plan's programmes for the Northeast, India's most economically backward region.

The NEC members stressed that the economic programmes initiated in the Tenth Plan must be long-term projects aimed at changing the economic status of the region and bringing it out of the current cycle of poverty and extremism.

The governors protested against what they called the imbalance and distortion in the disbursement of the NEC funds. The Centre agreed to look into the matter.

The states also asked the Centre to convert the central pool of funds for the Northeast into a cent per cent grant. The Centre agreed to consider that too.

Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha also attended the meeting.

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report