Prime Minister’s climate panel will meet today to review existing schemes

New Delhi: The first meeting of a reconstituted high-level climate panel, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is scheduled to be held on Monday to review the national action plan on climate change.

"The agenda of the meeting is to review all existing programmes and missions and see what more steps can be taken for tackling the challenges of climate change," a senior environment ministry official said.

The 'Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change', set up by the previous UPA government way back in 2007, was reconstituted by the NDA which dropped well-known environmentalist Sunita Narain and top industry leader Ratan Tata from the body.

The panel is tasked with evolving a coordinated action plan for assessment, adaptation and mitigation of climate change at the national level.

Besides environment minister Prakash Javadekar, the 18-member panel comprises external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, finance minister Arun Jaitley, water resources minister Uma Bharati, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh, urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu, science and technology minister Jitendra Singh and coal minister Piyush Goel, among others.

It also includes climate experts like former bureaucrat JM Mouskar as also the cabinet secretary and secretaries of the external affairs and environment ministries. Nripendra Misra, principal secretary to the Prime Minister, is the member-convener of the panel.

Ajay Mathur, chairperson of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, TERI chairperson RK Pachauri, economist Nitin Desai and retired diplomat Chandrasekhar Dasgupta have been retained as members of the panel.