Rajnath heads to Kyrgyz Republic to attend 9th SCO meet

New Delhi, Aug 23: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh is leading a delegation today to the Kyrgyz Republic to attend the 9th Meeting of Heads of Governments of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Member states, dealing with the prevention and elimination of emergency situations. According to an official statement, the Indian delegation includes senior officers from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the Ministry of External Affairs. India got the full membership of SCO this year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the SCO's annual Summit meeting held in Astana, Kazakhstan in June, 2017. The participation of India as SCO Member will open additional opportunities for giving new impetus to the development of international cooperation in the field of protecting the population and territories from emergency situations within the framework of the SCO and will bring it qualitatively new positions in regional and global formats. The two-day meeting, to be held on August 24-25, will consider and approve the draft Action Plan for 2018-2019 for the implementation of agreement between the governments of the SCO Member States on cooperation in providing assistance in the elimination of emergency situations. During the visit, the Home Minister is likely to have bilateral meetings with the Ministers of some of the SCO Member States. UNI