Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Yogi Adityanath have found a place in the reconstituted standing committee of the inter-state council (ISC) that looks into disputes between states.
The government has notified the reconstitution of the ISC and the standing committee on October 30.
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi as chairman, the ISC has Union ministers Rajnath Singh (Home), Sushma Swaraj (external affairs), Arun Jaitley (finance), Nitin Gadkari (road transport), Thaawar Chand Gehlot (social justice and empowerment) and Nirmala Sitharaman (defence) as members.
Former ministers M Venkaiah Naidu, who became vice president, and Manohar Parrikar, who moved to Goa as chief minister, are no more members of the ISC.
Chief ministers of all states and Union territories having legislative assemblies will also be members of the council.
Eight other Union ministers have been made permanent invitees to the council. They are Suresh Prabhu (commerce), Ramvilas Paswan (food), Harsimrat Kaur Badal (food processing industries), Jual Oram (tribal affairs), Prakash Javadekar (human resource development), Dharmendra Pradhan (petroleum) and Piyush Goyal (railway).
The home minister will lead the standing committee where there are 11 members.
The Punjab and Uttar Pradesh chief ministers found the place in the panel.
Overall, four Union ministers and seven chief ministers are members of the new standing committee of the council. The Union ministers are Swaraj, Jaitley, Gadkari and Gehlot.
Besides Singh and Adityanath, the chief ministers who are part of the standing committee are N Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra Pradesh), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Manik Sarkar (Tripura), Naveen Patnaik (Odisha) and Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan).
The standing committee will have consultation and recommend matters for consideration of the council, process all matters pertaining to Centre-state relations before they are taken up for consideration in the council.
Another task for this panel will be to monitor the implementation of decisions taken on the recommendations of the council and consider any other matter referred to it by the council.
