Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair the meeting of the interstate council (ISC) on Saturday, which will be convened after a period of 10 years.
In a first, the meeting will be held in the Rashtrapati Bhavan auditorium. Usually, such meetings are held in the Vigyan Bhavan here.
Modi, Union ministers and chief ministers will deliberate on issues of internal security, economic and social planning and interstate relations, among others.
The meeting will also discuss recommendations of the Punchhi Commission on Centre-state relations, use of Aadhaar as an identifier and use of Direct Benefit Transfer for providing subsidies, benefits and public services, improving quality of school education with focus on improving learning outcomes and incentivising better performances.
This is the first time Modi, along with 17 Union ministers, will be meeting all the chief ministers on a single platform after he assumed charge on May 26, 2014.
The interstate council was established on the recommendations of the Justice Sarkaria Commission in 1990 under Article 263 of the Constitution as an independent national forum with the prime minister as its chairman.
The last time the ISC met was on December 9, 2006. The council, a recommendatory body assigned to investigate and discuss subjects of common interest, have only met 10 times in the past 25 years.
During the Congress regime, only two meetings were held since its first meeting in 1990. While P V Narasimha Rao, as a prime minister, did not convene a single meeting between 1991 and 1996, Manmohan Singh called two meetings in June 2005 and December 2006.
The NDA’s A B Vajpayee convened four meetings of ISC between January 1999 and August 2003, while the United Front’s I K Gujral called two meetings within a span of four months in 1997.
National Front’s V P Singh called the first meeting of ISC, a month before his government fell in 1990, while Gujral’s predecessor convened a meeting in October 1996.