President for involving Governors in internal security matters

New Delhi, Feb 12 (IANS) President Pranab Mukherjee Thursday favoured actively involving governors of states in internal security issues.

Addressing the 46th conference of governors at Rashtrapati Bhavan, Mukherjee said governors and Lt. Governors have an important role to play in making cooperative federalism a reality, an official statement said.

"They are all people with great experience in public life. They occupy an important space in our constitutional structure. They also function as a sentinel of the constitution and a live link with the union.

"It is expected from them to make a positive contribution in strengthening the partnership between the centre and the states," he said.

The president said the authority that governors or Lt. Governors exercise is based on a moral premise, and as long as the exercise of that authority is confined to the boundaries of the Constitution, he did not see the possibility of any diminution of their role.

Mukherjee appreciated Home Minister Rajnath Singh's suggestion to actively involve the governors in the internal security related apparatus and requested him to consider convening separate meetings with groups of governors having similar problems like the northeastern states, coastal states and states with international borders.

He also suggested that the defence minister, similarly, involve governors of states having an international border in a focused interaction on border and security issues.

Pointing out the importance of education in transformation of the country, he urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to examine the possibility of progressively increasing spending on education from 3.8 percent of GDP at present to 6 percent of GDP in the coming years.

He also urged the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship and all central and state-level agencies to ensure coordination with governors to enable them to contribute to the achievement of targets of skilling and up-skilling 500 million Indians by 2022.

The two-day conference had as its agenda the security, both internal and external with a special focus on border security in states sharing international frontiers, financial inclusion topics like employment generation and employability and sanitation.

The conference was attended by 21 governors and two Lt. Governors.