Minister of State for Culture & External Affairs, Meenakashi Lekhi Wednesday inaugurated a two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Young Authors’ Conference, in the presence of Prof. Govind Prasad Sharma Chairman, National Book Trust India, Saumya Gupta IAS, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Education, and Yuvraj Malik Director, National Book Trust India. The Conference is being organised by the Ministry of Education at The Leela Palace, New Delhi.

Inaugurating the Conference, Lekhi said that there are numerous commonalities in our cultures and these ties need to be strengthened further. It is also imperative to seed ideas of finding linkages of common heritage and continue to learn from experiences of civilizational ethos and social value systems in the youth, she added.