Inter-State Council revamped; Shah head of standing panel

NEW DELHI: The Inter-State Council, which works to promote and support cooperative federalism in the country, has been reconstituted with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as chairman and chief ministers of all states and six Union ministers as members.

Ten Union ministers will be the permanent invitees to the Inter-State Council, according to an official notification. The government has also reconstituted the standing committee of the Inter-State Council with Union Home Minister Amit Shah as chairman.

While the Prime Minister is the chairman, Chief Ministers of all states and Union Territories having a legislative assembly and the administrators of UTs not having a legislative assembly have been made members.

The Union Ministers who were made members of the council are: Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman, Narendra Singh Tomar, Virendra Kumar, Hardeep Singh Puri, Nitin Gadkari, S Jaishankar, Arjun Munda, Piyush Goyal, Dhamendra Pradhan, Pralhad Joshi, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Kiren Rijiju and Bhupender Yadav.

The mandate of the council is to create a strong institutional framework to promote and support cooperative federalism in the country, activate the council and zonal councils by organising its regular meetings.

The committee will have continuous consultation and process matters for consideration of the council, process all matters pertaining to centre-state relations before they are taken up for consideration in the inter-state council.