Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Saturday chair the meeting of Inter-State Council comprising Chief Ministers of all States. The meeting, being convened after 10 years and for the first time at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, is expected to witness fireworks from opposition Chief Ministers against the Centre. The main agenda of the meeting is focused on issues relating to internal security, education, inter-state and centre-state relation.
This is the eleventh meeting of the Inter-State Council wherein the Prime Minister is expected to seek co-operation from Chief Ministers for consensus on the GST Bill. The meeting will also deliberate on the successful implementation of Aadhar and Direct Benefit Transfer schemes.
But then, the high profile meeting could see the Chief Ministers belonging to opposition parties blame the Centre on the contentious Centre-State relations in the wake of the Arunachal Pradesh verdict
The meeting being convened at the Rashtrapati Bhawan complex will see the participation of 17 Union Ministers. "Six Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Nitin Jairam Gadkari and Manohar Parrikar are the members of the Inter- State Council. Union Ministers Suresh Prabhu, D. V. Sadananda Gowda, Ramvilas Paswan, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Jual Oram, Thaawar Chand Gehlot, Smriti Zubin Irani, Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman are the permanent invitees to the Inter-State Council," said a statement issued by Home Ministry. The last meeting the Council was held on December 9, 2006.
The Modi Government revived the Inter-State Council structure after assuming office in May 2014. Home Minister Rajnath Singh had chaired meetings of all the five zonal councils over the last one year in various parts of the country in which chief ministers of states of the respective zones took part.