New Delhi: The Union Minister of State for Development of North Eastern Region (I/C), Prime Minister’s Office, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh today attended the famous 4-day Meghalaya Annual Cultural Festival, “Behdienkhlam”, held every year at the small peripheral town of Jowai, Meghalaya. On the concluding day of the festival today, Dr Jitendra Singh spent time with the visitors from across the region who had come to attend the festival. He also showed interest in the religious rituals associated with the event.
Dr Jitendra Singh said that his presence in the event is also a reiteration of the high priority that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and his Government accords not only to the development of the region, but also to promote, preserve and patronize the healthy traditional culture and civilization of the region.
The DoNER Minister said that Prime Minister has visited Northeast over 30 times in a short span of four years. He said that the Government has sought to identify with every ethnic and tribal group of the region, while the Ministry of DoNER introduced the practice of having a rotational Camp Secretariat by turn every month in each of the eight States and this has resulted in a very close affinity between the people of Northeast and the Ministry of DoNER.
It was during this Government, Dr Jitendra Singh said, that Meghalaya saw its first-ever train and got included in the rail map of India. Not only this, in the last four years, the law & order and security situation has considerably improved towards normalcy and now, the picturesque locales of Meghalaya are flooded with tourists, he said.
Earlier in his welcome address, Shri O.R. Challam, President, Seinraij Jowai, thanked Dr Jitendra Singh for attending the four-day festival which has very strong, emotional, sentimental, cultural and spiritual importance for the people living in this area.
