Zonal Councils are advisory councils and are made up of the states of India that have been grouped into five zones to foster cooperation among them. These were set up vide Part-III of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956. The

Union Home Minister The Minister of Home Affairs (or simply, the Home Minister, short-form HM) is the head of the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India. One of the senior-most officers in the Union Cabinet, the chief responsibility of the Home Minist ...

is the common chairman of five zonal councils. Each chief minister acts as a vice chairman of the council by rotation, holding office for a period of one year at a time. The present composition of each of these Zonal Councils is as under: The Northeastern states are not covered by any of the Zonal Councils and their special problems are addressed by another statutory body, the

North Eastern Council North Eastern Council (NEC) is a statutory advisory body constituted under the North Eastern Council Act 1971 and came into being on 7 November 1972 at Shillong. The eight States of Northeast India viz. Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghal ...

Shillong Shillong () is a hill station and the capital of Meghalaya, a state in northeastern India, which means "The Abode of Clouds". It is the headquarters of the East Khasi Hills district. Shillong is the 330th most populous city in India with a ...

, created by the North Eastern Council Act, 1971. This council originally comprised

Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares ...

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

Manipur Manipur () ( mni, Kangleipak) is a state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It also borders two regions of ...

Meghalaya Meghalaya (, or , meaning "abode of clouds"; from Sanskrit , "cloud" + , "abode") is a state in northeastern India. Meghalaya was formed on 21 January 1972 by carving out two districts from the state of Assam: (a) the United Khasi Hills and J ...

Mizoram Mizoram () is a state in Northeast India, with Aizawl as its seat of government and capital city. The name of the state is derived from "Mizo", the self-described name of the native inhabitants, and "Ram", which in the Mizo language means "lan ...

Nagaland Nagaland () is a landlocked state in the northeastern region of India. It is bordered by the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh to the north, Assam to the west, Manipur to the south and the Sagaing Region of Myanmar to the east. Its capital cit ...

and

Tripura Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the ea ...

; later the state of

Sikkim Sikkim (; ) is a state in Northeastern India. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Province No. 1 of Nepal in the west and West Bengal in the south. Sikkim is also close to the Silig ...

was also added vide North Eastern Council (Amendment) Act, 2002 notified on 23 December 2002. The union territories of

Andaman and Nicobar Islands The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India consisting of 572 islands, of which 37 are inhabited, at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The territory is about north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated f ...

and

Lakshadweep Lakshadweep (), also known as Laccadives (), is a union territory of India. It is an archipelago of 36 islands in the Arabian sea, located off the Malabar Coast. The name ''Lakshadweep'' means "one lakh islands" in Sanskrit, though the Lac ...

are not members of any of the Zonal Councils. However, they are presently special invitees to the

Southern Zonal Council Southern Zonal Council is a zonal council that comprises the states and union territories of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep are not members of any of the Zo ...

References

{{Zonal Councils of India Councils of India

See also

References