Shinde's flop show

• Only 7 CMs, mostly from North-East, attended the meeting called by the Home Minister
• Even Congress chief ministers gave a miss to the conference
• The meeting was to discuss police reforms
• Non-Cong. states accuse the Centre of trying to infringe on their rights
• No decision without states' concurrence: Shinde

New Delhi (Agencies): Several Chief Ministers on Monday kept away from a meeting here on administrative reforms. Only seven Chief Ministers -- Odisha (Naveen Patnaik), Assam (Tarun Gogoi), Uttarakhand (Vijay Bahuguna), Tripura (Manik Sarkar), Arunachal Pradesh (Nabam Tuki), Meghalaya (Mukul Sangma) and Nagaland (Neiphiu Rio) � attended the conference convened by Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. The meeting was to discuss recommendations of the Administrative Reforms Commission on police reforms and public order.

Non-Congress Chief Ministers of West Bengal (Mamata Banerjee), Tamil Nadu (J Jayalalithaa), Uttar Pradesh (Akhilesh Yadav), Gujarat (Narendra Modi), Bihar (Nitish Kumar), Madhya Pradesh (Shivraj Singh Chouhan) and Chhattisgarh (Raman Singh) did not attend the meeting.The meet was given a miss by even some Congress Chief Ministers: Maharashtra (Prithviraj Chavan), Andhra Pradesh (N Kiran Kumar Reddy), Rajasthan (Ashok Gehlot), Kerala (Oommen Chandy), Manipur (O Ibobi Singh) and Himachal Pradesh (Virbhadra Singh).

Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who had initially given his consent, did not attend it. On behalf of Delhi, the meet was attended by Lt Governer Tejinder Khanna.

The meeting was attended by several Central ministers who are members of the Group of Ministers on Administrative Reforms. They included Petroleum Minister M Verappa Moily, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal, Road Transport and Highway Minister C P Joshi, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, Ministers of State V Narayanasami, RPN Singh and Mullappally Ramachandran.

With some Chief Ministers accusing the Centre of trying to infringe on their powers, Shinde tried to allay their apprehensions saying no recommendation of Administrative Reforms Commission on policing and public order would be implemented without their consent.

Shinde also brushed aside the suggestion that many Chief Ministers boycotted the conference saying representatives of 23 state governments attended it. The Home Minister said the Central government heard all the state governments and he was of the view that the Centre should not go against the wishes of the Chief Ministers and there should be cordial relations between the Centre and the states.

"On issues where the Chief Ministers' have objections, we should not go ahead and should move only after the concurrence of the states. I fully agree with that," he said after the day-long conference.