Aizawl: The Northeast should have a
separate time zone as it was losing out in following Indian
Standard Time, Mizoram Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla said
on Friday.
"The Northeastern states are the losers in using the
Indian Standard Time (IST) and it is a high time that we
reschedule our time," Lal Thanhawla said at a seminar
`Separate Time Zone for the North East India` organised by the
Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP).
Lal Thanhawla said that he had made suggestions to the
Centre that the Northeast should be in a separate time zone
and had recently raised the issue at an AICC meeting in New
Delhi.
The chief minister said that the law-makers in the
region should also take an interest in the issue and go for a
consensus in the region.
He said that while researchers have been in favour of
a separate time zone, politicians were against it saying that
it would enhance separatist movements in the region.
A team of researchers in 1982 had recommended three
time zones in the country, but the Centre had rejected the
proposals, while the committee constituted in 2004 by Kapil
Sibal, Union Minister for Science and Technology did not
recommend separate time zones, he said.
Another speaker, Jahnu Barua, who has done extensive
research on the subject for over 20 years, said that the
absence of separate time zone for the Northeast has created
unproductive tendencies, more alienation, imbalance in the
biological clock, degeneration of society, wastage of
electricity and loss in productivity.
Barua said that governed by the IST, northeasterners
went to bed late by at least by two hours using two hours of
extra electricity every day by keeping lights on in their
homes.
"Taking the average unit cost of power at Rs 2.50,
people of the Northeast lost Rs 43,800 crore in 40 years from
consumption of extra electricity in their homes," he said,
adding that this in 40 years would amount to Rs 94,100 crore.
He pointed out that those states on the west of
longitude 82.9 degree east, on which the IST was based, were
much more prosperous and developed than the eastern states.
PTI
