India's growth minus South is unimaginable, says Amit Shah

Tirupati: Union home minister Amit Shah said India’s development could not be imagined without the contributions of states of southern India.

Shah on Sunday chaired the Southern Zonal Council (SZC) meeting held at Taj Hotel in Tirupati. In his opening remarks, Shah said the ancient culture, traditions and languages of southern states of India enriched the country’s ancient legacy.
“The Modi government respects all regional languages of India and therefore at today’s SZC meeting we made arrangements for translation into all languages of the states that are in the Southern Zonal Council,” he said adding that he would be happy to see delegates feeling free to speak in the language of their state in the future.

Claiming that the Centre was able to achieve the distinction of administering 111 crore vaccine doses as of Sunday during the Covid-19 pandemic, Shah stated that this was a big achievement and an example of cooperative federalism. “It is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to leverage cooperative and competitive federalism to achieve all round growth in the country,” he added.

“When the pandemic began, it was said that India would not be able to cope with it. However, the country quickly ramped up its health infrastructure as well as domestic production of vaccines under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi. Today, we have overcome fear about the pandemic and the Union government will continue to do everything possible to cover all states under the vaccination programme,” he maintained.

He said the Zonal Councils were advisory bodies in nature and yet they had been able to successfully solve many issues. The Zonal Councils provided an opportunity for interaction at the highest level amongst members, he added.
“In the last seven years we have held 18 meetings of Zonal Councils, compared to the very few meetings held earlier,” he informed, adding that now meetings of different Zonal Councils were convened regularly and this could happen only with the cooperation of all state governments as well as Central ministries and departments”.