Parkash Singh Badal chairs NITI Aayog sub-group meeting

SHILLONG: Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today chaired the NITI Aayog sub-group meeting here, which was attended by Meghalaya CM Mukul Sangma and his Arunachal Pradesh counterpart Nabam Tuki.

"It is an important meeting... As you know the greater problem of the country is unemployment...," Badal said after chairing the meeting.

He said this board of CMs "will go into details about how to make this nation a skilled one and we are gathering the views of different chief ministers on this line".

Badal also set June 25 as the deadline for the states to submit their views and suggestions.

NITI Aayog CEO Sindhushree Khullar stressed on the need to speed up the recommendation process and expressed concern that only a few states have responded in writing on the same to her office.

The CMs of Assam, Tripura, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya are members of the sub-group constituted by the governing council of the NITI Aayog earlier this year.

The sub-group was tasked to address issues pertaining to human resources, especially youth, and work on scientific methods on moving towards creating a pool of skilled manpower.

The chief ministers are expected to recommend measures to NITI Aayog on how to deal with shortage of skilled manpower in production lines and also expand outreach of skill programmes, particularly in demographically advantageous states.