Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Government has decided to raise the issues of coal royalty and poor mobile network in rural areas at the 24th meeting of the Eastern Zonal Council (EZC) to be held on Friday here.
The State Government will raise the demand for a hike in coal royalty and apprise the meeting of the non-availability of mobile service in 11,000 villages in the state, informed Odisha Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy.
The 24th meeting of the EZC, comprising of the States of Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, is scheduled to be held on Friday at the Lok Seva Bhawan here.
The Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah will chair this meeting. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is the Vice-Chairman and host.
Chief Ministers of Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand respectively, Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee and Hemant Soren, will also participate.
Last meeting of the Eastern Zonal Council was last held in Kolkata on October 1, 2018.
The upcoming meeting of the Eastern Zonal Council will deliberate upon nearly 4 dozen issues which inter alia include inter-State water issues, power transmission lines, royalty on & operationalization of coals mines, land & forest clearance of rail projects, investigation of heinous offences, cattle smuggling across country’s borders, lack of telecom & banking infrastructure in remote areas, petroleum projects, sharing pattern on centrally collected revenues etc, an official statement said.