Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways and Ayush Sarbananda Sonowal termed the Northeast as the powerhouse of India’s cruise towards self-reliance. The Union Minister said this while addressing a press conference regarding the development of India’s northeastern region since 2014 in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Union Minister Sonowal highlighted the key role played by the Union government to bring the northeast to the forefront of India’s growth story. The Minister said that the innovative policy framework enabling a positive environment for trade and commerce to prosper led to the historic rise of the Northeast since 2014, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways said.
Sonowal said, “The Northeast is the powerhouse of India’s cruise towards self-reliance. Given the transformational connectivity that the Northeast has experienced in the last nine years, the region has now become the potential hotspot of trade and commerce. Prime Minister Modi realised the strategic importance of the northeast and enabled an environment of an economic resurgence with promising commerce with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) group of countries.”
Speaking about the peace effort for sustained development in the region, Sonowal said, “Prime Minister Modi has always met the brethren of Northeast with utmost respect and with a deep sense of acknowledgement for them as equal partners of nation building. Due to this humane approach of Prime Minister Modi, insurgency has significantly dropped, leading to a nearly 100% drop in civilian casualties in 2023. More than 8,000 insurgents have surrendered in the past nine years. A concerted effort to scale down the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) has led to its complete withdrawal from Tripura and Meghalaya, significant reduction of area under the act in Assam, Nagaland and Manipur.”
“With historic peace accords with the Bodos, Naga, Karbi, Tripuri, Bru and Adivasi, the disgruntled communities have been brought to the mainstream through dialogue, resulting in sustained peace that the region was hoping and longing for decades. The other result is a reduction of travel time between Northeast and other states with railway lines reaching Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Manipur and Meghalaya apart from Assam,” Sonowal added.
“This year, as a major development of cruise tourism in Brahmaputra river, MV Ganga Vilas completed the longest river cruise route in the world by travelling from Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi to Assam’s Dibrugarh via Bangladesh covering around 3,200 kilometres in 51 days,” Sonowal further said.