With less than four months remaining for India to assume the G-20 Presidency, finalising the G-20 meeting calendar spread across 53 cities is of critical importance to ensure logistics arrangements such as venues, hotel rooms, and detailed programme of each meeting, said a source.
Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged states to develop a mass movement around G-20 of which India is scheduled to assume presidency from December 1 this year, the top government officials have swung into action to finalise and freeze the calendar of the G-20 meetings to be held in Delhi and several other cities across the country.
According to sources, India’s G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant has called an inter-ministerial meeting of around 20 Secretaries on August 17. The meeting is expected to be attended by Secretaries from the key ministries and departments, officials from Lok Sabha Secretariat, and Comptroller and Auditor General, sources said.
The sources said that among the Secretaries who have been asked to attend the meeting are —Ajay Seth (Economic Affairs), S Radha Chauhan (DoPT), Manoj Ahuja (Agriculture), Govind Mohan (Culture), Alkesh Kumar Sharma (Electronics and IT), Kamal Kishore (NDMA), Sunil Barthwal (Labour), Leena Nandan (Environment), K Sanjay Murthy (Higher Education), Alok Kumar (Power), Rajesh Bhushan (Health), BVR Subramanyam (Commerce), Arvind Singh (Tourism), Indevar Pandey (Women and Child Development), Anurag Jain (DPIIT), Dr Srivari Chandrasekhar (Science & Technology), S Somnath (Space), Manoj Joshi (Housing & Urban Affairs), and Sanjay Kumar (Youth Affairs).
These Secretaries are heading separate working groups on issues ranging from anti-corruption to agriculture, and from culture to digital economy, sources said.