GUWAHATI, India: A leading politician in northeast India gave fresh momentum Thursday to calls to scrap the country’s single time zone, which causes problems for easterners who face summer sunrise as early as 4:30 a.m.

Despite India’s vast size, it has one time of +5:30 from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) for its 1.2-billion population, spread from points further east than Bangladesh to the western Arabian Sea.

At this time of year the sun rises in the east shortly before 6 a.m., more than 90 minutes earlier than in the west, while daybreak in the east comes as early as 4:30 a.m. around the summer solstice.

“We need a local time for Assam and the other northeastern states which will be ahead of the Indian Standard Time (IST) by at least an hour to 90 minutes,” Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, told AFP.