June 05, 2026

The 13^th Annual General Meeting of the NESAC Society was held on 4^th June 2026 at the State Convention Centre, Shillong, Meghalaya. The meeting was presided over by Hon'ble Union Minister for Communications and Minister for Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER), Shri Jyotiraditya M. Scindia. Dr. V. Narayanan, Secretary, Department of Space, Chairman, ISRO and Vice-President, NESAC Society, Shri Conrad K. Sangma, Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Shri Sukanta Majumdar, Minister of State for DoNER and senior officials from the Central Government and all eight North East States also attended the meeting.

Delivering the Welcome Address, Dr. V. Narayanan placed NESAC's contributions in the region within the broader frame work of Viksit Bharat 2047, describing space as an indispensable enabler of the Hon'ble Prime Minister's national vision. He drew attention to ISRO's Space Vision 2047, which charts an ambitious course encompassing next-generation launch vehicles, successive Gaganyaan and Chandrayaan missions, the commissioning of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035, and a crewed Indian Moon landing by 2040.

Acknowledging the direction provided by the Hon'ble Home Minister and President of the NESAC Society, Shri Amit Shah, Dr. Narayanan noted that a comprehensive Plan of Action had been drawn up to identify specific domains where space technology could strengthen governance, planning and service delivery across the Northeast. In pursuance of this, NESAC, has successfully executed 110 projects covering all eight Northeastern States. The NE-SPARKS (North East Students Program on Awareness, Reach, and Knowledge on Space) programme, undertaken on the direction of the Hon'ble Home Minister, enabled 786 students from the Northeastern States to visit ISRO's facilities in Bengaluru.

Following the Welcome Address, Dr. S. P. Aggarwal, Director, NESAC & Secretary NESAC Society, made a structured presentation on the ongoing projects, recent activities and the forward roadmap of the Centre. Since the previous Society Meeting in Tripura, 50 projects have been brought to completion while 78 projects are ongoing across different geospatial themes.

Addressing the gathering, Hon'ble Union Minister Shri Jyotiraditya M. Scindia appreciated the work accomplished by NESAC. He underscored the deep and enduring relationship between DoNER and NESAC, noting that both institutions, have worked in tandem for over 26 years as instruments of transformation across the eight North East States. He noted that the 50 completed projects constitute a growing digital knowledge base serving the aspirations of over 4.5 crore people in the region. He also highlighted the economic potential of agarwood cultivation and called for geospatial mapping and traceability systems to unlock new value chains for farmers and entrepreneurs across the Northeast.

Hon'ble Union Minister called for Future-Ready Space-Enabled Development Strategy for Northeast. He outlined five strategic priorities to position NESAC as a transformative institution for data-driven and climate-smart regional governance. First, he called for high-resolution village-level resource mapping to inform grassroots planning and policy. Second, he emphasised systematic monitoring of wetlands, forests, rivers and natural landscapes as a foundation for sustainable development. Third, he advocated active promotion of geospatial and space-technology startups to build an innovation ecosystem across the Northeast. Fourth, he proposed the development of NER-Shield, an all-hazard disaster resilience digital twin platform integrating hyper-local, multilingual last-mile alert systems with telecom networks and geospatial risk-monitoring tools. Fifth, he called for the creation of a Northeast Green Wealth and Natural Capital Accounting framework to value and protect the region's ecological heritage.

Apart from reviewing several key initiatives undertaken by NESAC, the meeting took stock of the Vision NESAC Roadmap prepared on the direction of the Hon'ble President of the Society which sets out a phased pathway for the region through space-enabled governance: from Smart Analytics, advancing to a Smart Region, and culminating in an Autonomous Ecosystem, all oriented towards the overarching goal of Viksit North East by 2047. NESAC will continue to pursue the targets set during the Society Meeting and work towards the milestones outlined in the Vision NESAC Roadmap.