Key Narendra Modi schemes to get push ahead of 2019 elections

Ahead of the 2019 elections, the ministry of home affairs will be pushing for key central government schemes such as housing for all, Aadhaar and immunisation at the Western Zonal Council meeting to be held at Ahmedabad on Thursday.

At the meeting to be chaired by home minister Rajnath Singh, the Centre will urge three states and two union territories to identify surplus land and create a poll to execute the housing scheme, a senior MHA officer said. The meeting will be attended by chief ministers and senior ministers of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and union territories of Daman & Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli.

In the last meeting held in Mumbai in 2016, the issue of locating patches of land near to the sea was taken up and the ministry will review bottlenecks and hitches for creating land bank in these states and union territories because only after that next step of creating a blueprint for building houses can be prepared, said ministry sources.


Aadhaar has also been included among the ten agenda items for taking a second look at problems for linking biometric with welfare schemes. The other important item that will come up for discussion is of the immunisation programme, Mission Indradhanush, with the Centre advancing the deadline for completing it by December 2018.

In the last meeting, the Council discussed coastal security, internal security, formulation of plans for countering terrorism, issuance of biometric identity cards to fishermen and issue of card readers, and modernization of police force. Other than that, topics relating to setting up of Regional Development Authority for development of infrastructure in the region, setting up of international museum of Indus–Valley civilization in Kutch District was also discussed, the ministry had stated then.

The council gatherings are mandated to take up and make suggestions on issues of common interest to the states.