New Delhi, Dec 11: The Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will chair the 26th meeting of the Southern Zonal Council to be held in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh tomorrow.
The Southern Zonal Council comprises of the States of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana and Puducherry. The Chief Ministers of all these states and senior officers from both Central and State Governments are expected to participate in this meeting.
The Zonal Councils are advisory bodies that discuss and advise the Central and State Governments on matters of common interest pertaining to a gamut of subjects, viz., infrastructures, health, security, social welfare, linguistic minorities, border disputes, etc., on the action to be taken in such matter.
The meeting of each Zonal Council needs to be held once in a year to iron out the differences between the governments on issues of development concerning regional interest and national programmes. However, meetings of most of the zonal councils were quite infrequent during the past.
Issues of Inter-State and Centre-State cooperation and coordination have been flagged for this meeting, such as coastal security, peninsular region industrial corridor, introduction of peninsular tourism trains, finalization of inter-state reciprocal transport agreement, curbing the use of unacceptable levels of pesticides in fruits and vegetables, maintaining uniform standards of nursing courses, etc. Some other substantial issues of Centre State and Inter-State matters are also likely to be raised by Member States in the Council.
