Ahmedabad/New Delhi/Gandhinagar

Gujarat Chief Minister Smt Anandiben Patel will attend the first India China State and Provincial Leaders Forum meeting at Beijing during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s China visit. Maharashtra Chief Minister and Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation(AMC) Commissioner will also attend this meeting.

In reply to a question asked by a journalist during a press conference in Delhi, India’s Foreign Secretary JaiShankar said, “the concept of India China State and Provincial Leaders Forum is that it is possible to cooperate between two countries at different level. Central level cooperation is ofcourse there, but there are many issue where you can have cooperation at the provincial and city levels. With China we actually have some history that there has been exchange of visits at the state levels. Number of Chief Ministers from India have visited China and Chinese provincial leaders have visited India.”

“We have created a forum through which Chief Ministers are able to meet regularly with their counterparts for linkages. Similar model has been there successfully between Japan and China, China and USA and Europe. This is the mechanism that has worked well.”

It should be mentioned that earlier three Chief Ministers were to travel with the Prime Minister to China, but later there were reports that Congress ruled Karnataka Chief Minister has refused to join PM’s China visit. When asked which are the Chief Ministers visiting to China with Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary mentioned Gujarat and Maharashtra but didn’t mention Karnataka.

Meanwhile in an interview to Gujarati news channel, Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel said that she would visit China with a delegation of about 25 persons. She said that the tour of Chief Ministers is attached with Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s visit on the first day, but after that Chief Ministers will visit the country as per their own plan unattached with the Prime Minister’s visit.

Chief Minister said Gujarat has signed MoU with a province in China and Ahmedabad has signed MoU with a city in China. “Our efforts are in direction to bring technology from China,” she added.

– DeshGujarat