Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government will host the Eastern Zonal Council (EZC) meeting to be chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and attended by chief ministers of four states in the region, a senior officer said Wednesday.
The date of the meeting, however, has not been finalised yet.
Odisha will host the upcoming EZC meeting to be chaired by the Union Home Minister. The preparatory exercise for the meeting is done at the standing committee meeting at the level of chief secretaries Tuesday, Odisha Chief Secretary Anu Garg said.
She said the chief ministers of Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar will attend the EZC meeting along with their senior officers.
The EZC’s standing committee meeting was attended by representatives of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha.
The chief secretary said that the 74 agenda of the standing committee meeting was on a wide range of inter-state, development and governance-related issues.
They include water sharing, flood management, railway projects, rehabilitation and resettlement, mining in ecologically sensitive areas, human-elephant conflict, cyber security, digital infrastructure, telecom connectivity, banking access in unbanked rural areas and the implementation of Centrally Sponsored Schemes.
The Eastern Zonal Council, comprising the States of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Sikkim and West Bengal, is an advisory body set up to develop the habit of cooperative working among the states.
Garg said Odisha raised the Subarnarekha Multipurpose Project (SMP) and recurring flood-related issues with Jharkhand.
We raised the issue of Jharkhand unilaterally increasing the height of the SMP, resulting in regular flooding in Odisha’s Balasore district, she said.
The chief secretary said that the Water Resources Secretaries of the two states were asked to hold joint discussions with their teams and work out an appropriate solution before the next meeting of the Eastern Zonal Council.
Other inter-state river issues involving the eastern states also came up for discussion, she said.
