In 1971, the Indian Central government set up the North Eastern Council by an act of parliament. The seven States of the North East India viz. Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, are the members of the council, with their chief ministers and governors representing them. The headquarter of the council is situated in Shillong, and functions under Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (Government of India).
The Council is an advisory body and may discuss any matter in which the north-eastern states have a common interest and advise the Central Government as to the action to be taken on any such matter. This was done so as to take care of economic and social planning of these states (since they were lagging from other states) and to take care of inter-state disputes.
The council has to its credit a lot of achievements mostly in electricity and education sector. The council has funded projects producing around 250 MW of electricity to reduce the region's dependency on West Bengal and Orissa. The council has also taken up major highway and bridge building projects and fund many engineering and medical colleges.
The funding of council mainly lies with the central government with small portions contributed by the state governments as well. The NEC act has been amended in 2002 to add Sikkim and restructure it as the regional planniong body for the North Eastern Region.
Read more about North Eastern Council: Background
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