Rahul raises pitch for better connectivity in North-East

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that poor connectivity in the North East would have to be aggressively addressed to remove the barriers of movement in the rest of the country and to properly utilise the productivity of the people.

"The reason for the energy of the North-East people not being properly utilised is because of poor connectivity in the region", Gandhi said while interacting with students at the Don Bosco University in Guwahati.

"Also incidents like the Nido (Taniam of Arunachal Pradesh) case are barriers for movement of people. They don't want to move because they are scared. We'll have to reduce those barriers as well", Gandhi said while answering a question by a student from Shillong, through video conferencing.

"We'll have to remove all the barriers and create a North East which is connected so that groups can move, people can move. The productivity that you have can actually be used to take these states forward", he said. "We have been doing a lot of work during the last 5-10 years with connectivity, with highways in the country. We have to be much more aggressive with connectivity in the North East", he said.

"We must ensure that the North-East people can move between states, in the NE and in the rest of the country".