NORTH-EASTERN COUNCIL

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The North-Eastern Council (NEC), based at Shillong, has been set up under the North-Eastern Council Act, 1971. The Act was amended by the North Eastern Council (Amendment) Act, 2002 in December, 2002 to make it a regional planning body for the North-Eastern States and also to include Sikkim as the 8th member of the Council. In terms of the amendment, the Council will give priority to schemes and projects which will benefit the States. However, in case of Sikkim, the Council will formulate specific projects and schemes. Review of implementation of projects and schemes in the Region has also been mandated. The major achievements of NEC are as follows:-

• In the 5-year period ended 2002-03, Rs. 2018.55 crore was spent by NEC on development of the North Eastern Region.
• NEC Projects are mostly regional/inter-State in character. Priority is given to infrastructure sectors such as transport, communications and power.
• With the addition of four 50-seater turboprop aircraft to the fleet of Alliance Air with NEC’s support air connectivity has significantly improved in the North-Eastern region. Ten airports - Guwahati, Jorhat, Lilabari, Dimapur, Silchar, Tezpur, Dibrugarh, Agartala, Barapani and Imphal - have been upgraded with NEC sharing 60 per cent of the cost.
• During the period, NEC completed 1016 km of roads (22 schemes). Presently, around 29 road projects (2,676 km) are under implementation.
• Many projects have been assisted by NEC in the power sector. They include Ranganadi HEP (3X135 MW), Arunachal Pradesh, Kopili HEP 150 MW, Assam-Meghalaya, Doyang hydro electric project (HEP), (3x25 MW) in Nagaland, Baramura GPP (1x21 MW) and Baramura GPP (1 x 6.5 MW) both in Tripura.
• A tele-medicine network is being set up through NEC to provide state-of-the-art, special health-care facilities to a large number of patients using information and communication technology to connect the Regional Medical Institutes and district hospitals with expert consultants in different parts of the country. The project will cover all State and district headquarters in three phases.(PIB Features)