Chief Secretaries' Conference Turns to Implementation as 198 Reform Points Stay Pending

The 2026 National Conference of Chief Secretaries is being prepared around mining, linear infrastructure, artificial intelligence and data-driven administration. Of the 422 reform action points identified since the conference series began in 2022, 224 have been completed, leaving 198 still open.

The conference brings together the Chief Secretaries of all states and Union Territories with the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Secretary and senior central officials. It was started in 2022 as an annual forum to agree on a shared set of administrative actions and to track them across years. The mechanism differs from earlier Centre-state meetings because each edition produces numbered action points with assigned owners, and the following year's agenda opens with a status report on what was closed. The Cabinet Secretariat coordinates the preparation, and central ministries whose subjects figure on the agenda prepare background material and join the sessions. States are grouped so that each presents on a theme rather than each state presenting separately, which keeps the discussion on the subject rather than on state-specific claims.

The completion figure places the pending share at just under half after four years. Reform points from this series have covered land record digitisation, single-window clearance for industry, drinking water supply, primary education outcomes and urban governance. Officers handling these points are typically Principal Secretaries and Secretaries in state departments, which makes the completion record a measure of state secretariat capacity as much as of central direction. The action points cover both subjects in the state list and those requiring central and state action together, which is why closure depends on state departments acting rather than on central directions alone. Where a point requires legislative change or the amendment of state rules, the timeline runs longer than the annual conference cycle allows.

Previous editions of the conference were held at Dharamshala, Delhi and other venues, with themes covering ease of doing business, rural credit and the delivery of central schemes through state machinery. Each edition assigns states to working groups that prepare presentations, which means the preparatory work involves Chief Secretaries and their teams for several weeks before the meeting.

The agenda for 2026 signals where the Centre wants senior state administration to concentrate next. Mining reform touches state revenue and auction policy. Linear infrastructure covers land acquisition and forest clearance for highways, transmission lines and pipelines, where projects stall at the state level. Artificial intelligence and data-driven administration point towards the use of state data for scheme targeting and monitoring. All three require state secretaries to work across departmental lines. Mining reform covers the auction of mineral blocks, the operation of District Mineral Foundations funded by levies on mining, and the clearance processes that determine when an auctioned block begins production. Several auctioned blocks have remained undeveloped, and the Centre has been examining why clearances stall at the state level.

The shift from framing policy to tracking delivery changes what is expected of Chief Secretaries and the officers reporting to them. States are being asked to show closure on earlier commitments before new ones are added, and the pendency figure is now part of the conference record. Implementation monitoring of this kind also feeds into how the Centre allocates scheme funds and incentive grants tied to reform milestones. States have also been asked to work on data systems that allow scheme beneficiaries to be identified and tracked without duplicate records, which touches on the state data policies and the sharing arrangements with central databases. The administrative and legal questions this raises sit with the Chief Secretary's office in most states.

The conference series has run annually since 2022. The count stands at 422 action points identified and 224 recorded as completed.