Himshikhar Khabar
New Tehri: Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation, Amit Shah chaired the 24th meeting of Central Zonal Council in Narendra Nagar, Uttarakhand, today. Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath attended the meeting. Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan participated in the meeting through video conferencing.
On the call of Union Home Minister, Central Zonal Council unanimously passed a resolution congratulating all the players for winning more than 100 medals for the first time in the Asian Games for India and bringing glory to the country. In the meeting, the Central Zonal Council also welcomed the spectacular success of Chandrayaan-3, successful organization of the G20 Summit and the historic passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill by Parliament.
In his address, Amit Shah said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the role of Zonal Councils have transformed from advisory to action platforms. He said that the Central Zonal Council’s member states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh have hugely contributed in the country’s GDP and development. Shah added that the member states of Central Zonal Council are the major centres for agriculture, animal husbandry and food grain production, mining, water supply and tourism in the country, without these states adequate water supply cannot be imagined.
Amit Shah said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always emphasized on strengthening the spirit of cooperative federalism, under this policy, Zonal Councils have played the role of catalyst in solving problems, increasing financial inclusion and bringing policy changes. He said that the Central Zonal Council’s States have implemented Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s concept of Team India at the grassroots level.
The Union Home Minister said that taking an important step towards realizing the Prime Minister’s resolve to make country’s farmers prosperous, now pulses, oilseeds and maize of farmers across the country will be procured 100% at Minimum Support Price (MSP) by NAFED. In the 23rd meeting of Central Zonal Council held in Bhopal on August 22, 2022, the inclusion of lac production in the Kisan Credit Card and Crop Insurance Scheme was discussed. After this, the scale of finance for lac production has been determined in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. In today’s meeting, a decision was taken to get a study done by ICAR to include Lac production in Revised Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme, this will benefit farmers engaged in Lac production. Under this, Kisan Credit Cards are being issued and this decision will benefit the farmers involved in lac production. In the last meeting held in Bhopal, a decision was taken to fix benchmark price for Kodo and Kutki Sri Anna (Minor Millets) produce. The Department of Food and Public Distribution, Government of India issued an order in this regard on August 9, 2023. It has also been decided in the meeting to fix the price of Kodo and Kutki produce at par with the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of Ragi, this decision will benefit crores of farmers across the country, especially in member states of Central Zonal Council. Along with this, issues like banking facility to every village within 5 km radius, formation of 2 lakh new PACS in the country, royalty and mining related issues and creation of basic infrastructure in Left Wing Extremism-affected districts were also discussed in the meeting.
Amit Shah asked the member states to give priority and special emphasis on issues like Cooperation, drop out ratio of school going children and malnutrition. Emphasizing the need to eliminate malnutrition among children, he said that it is our collective responsibility to address this problem with sensitivity. He said that from 2004 to 2014, 11 meetings of Zonal Councils and 14 meetings of Standing Committees were held, while from 2014 to 2023, 25 meetings of Zonal Councils and 29 meetings of Standing Committees were held. He added that between 2004 and 2014, a total of 570 issues were discussed, out of which 448 were resolved, while between 2014 and 2023, a total of 1315 issues were discussed, out of which 1157 issues were resolved.