The apex body taking decisions on domestic issues of climate change and on guiding international negotiations, it had become defunct over the past few years. It had been created by the UPA in its first tenure.

If the Prime Minister’s schedule permits, the council — was reformed on Tuesday — would meet in November itself, before the next round of UN climate negotiations in December in Peru, sources in the government said. The meeting would be its first in four years.

The reconstituted council includes the ministers of finance, environment, power, urban development, agriculture and water resources.

Beside government officials, it will have R K Pachauri, head of The Energy and Resources Institute and chair of the UN Intergovernmental on Climate Change, and economist Nitin Desai on its board. Desai, too, has worked at the UN.

Chandrashekar Dasgupta, a retired diplomat and one of the most senior hands at climate negotiations, is part of the council.

The team also includes J M Mauskar, who lead climate negotiation teams for India for several years and has served in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at a senior position. The director-general of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Ajay Mathur, has also been made a member. Mathur has been a key official in charge of the National Energy Efficiency Mission, negotiated on behalf of India and served as director on the UN’s Green Climate Fund.

Businessman Ratan Tata and the head of the Centre for Science and Environment, Sunita Narain, have been dropped from the council.

The council was set up in 2006 . It had not met for the past three years as differences arose within the UPA government on the direction its climate change policy should take. The reconstituted council, sources in the government said, would provide guidance ahead of the negotiations for a new global compact, to be signed in 2015. It will also guide the domestic action plans of the government, with the NDA putting an additional focus on fast-pacing solar power deployment.

Besides setting up the top-level council, the NDA government has also begun several parallel processes to gear up for the upcoming climate negotiations. The first set of results of the studies it had commissioned to assess India’s greenhouse gas emissions trajectory are expected by December. These, and internal assessments of the government, will be used to prepare India’s new voluntary targets to the global community under the new pact by June 2015. In climate jargon, these are referred to as “intended nationally determined contributions” or INDCs. India is expected to revise its existing voluntary targets, not only on reduction of greenhouse gases but on technology, finance and adaptation.

Sources said the government is planning to enlist experienced negotiators from beyond its bench strength, from within the ministries, to bolster the team that would participate in the talks this year in Lima and next year in Paris.

“These are two critical years and we plan to have a consistent and experienced teams that will take forward India’s positive agenda at the Conference of Parties,” said a senior functionary.

The involvement of old hands at the talks, such as Dasgupta, Mauskar and Mathur in the council, is expected to provide consistency in the Indian stance from previous years, sources said.

“We are working and will continue to work closely with groups of developing countries such as the G77+ China and the Like-Minded Developing Countries to put forth our views,” said the functionary. “Overall, the situation has not changed much in terms of what different country groups want but India intends to have a positive agenda for the talks.”

He added the developed countries, like the US and the EU members, continue to push for delinking their obligation of financial and technical support from the efforts that poor and developing countries put to fight climate change, under the new pact to be signed in 2015.

“They (the US and EU members) are still advocating an agreement focusing only on mitigation actions of all countries instead of a holistic package, which most developing countries oppose,” he said.

The Indian government is expected to finalise its new non-negotiable redlines for the next round of talks in Peru. If the Prime Minister’s schedule permits, the council on climate change could meet once before that happens.