NEW DELHI, Dec 2 - The development status of the Northeast will come up for review on December 4 in Guwahati, when top officials of the NITI Aayog and Ministry of Development for North Eastern Region (DoNER) take part in the second meeting of the newly constituted �NITI Forum for North East�.
The meeting will be chaired by NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Dr Rajiv Kumar, while Minister of State for DoNER Dr Jitendra Singh will co-chair it. Members of the Forum include Secretaries of various ministries of the Government of India, Chief Secretaries of all the eight northeastern states and also senior government officials and experts from various fields. The Secretary, North Eastern Council (NEC) is the Member Secretary of the Forum.
Deliberations during the meeting will mainly focus on issues pertaining to five critical sectors � tourism, bamboo, dairy, fisheries and tea. Besides the members of the Forum, a number of experts from the government, industry and academia have also been invited to make the discussions more meaningful, official sources said.
In February 2018, the �NITI Forum for North East� was constituted to periodically review the development status of the northeastern region. The Forum is tasked to identify various constraints on the way of accelerated, inclusive and sustainable economic growth in the region and to recommend suitable interventions for addressing identified constraints.
The Forum�s first meeting was held on April 10, 2018 in Agartala where a wide ranging spectrum of issues was discussed. It emerged that infrastructure, horticulture, bamboo, tourism, food processing, education, livelihoods, health and �Made in North Eastern Region� were areas critical for the to the region�s development. Decisions taken at the meeting have since been carried forward by various government departments and other stakeholders, sources said.
