Chennai : Days after Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi returned 10 Bills passed by the State Assembly, the House on Saturday met for a special sitting and re-adopted all of them, even as Chief Minister M K Stalin slammed the Governor for withholding the Bills due to his “whims and fancies.”
Opposition AIADMK, which staged a walkout, asked why a special meeting to readopt the Bills was being held when the government has already taken the matter to the Supreme Court.
The BJP, which has 4 MLAs, also walked out.
The bills, covering different departments including Law, Agriculture and Higher Education, were passed in the wake of Ravi returning them on November 13. The re-adopted bills were later sent to the Governor for his assent.
Earlier, Stalin moved a resolution to take up for reconsideration, the 10 bills. While 2 bills each were adopted by the House in 2020 and 2023, six others were passed last year.
Without giving any reasons, Ravi had returned the Bills, mentioning “I withhold Assent” to them, Stalin said.
Under the proviso to Article 200 of the Constitution, if they were passed again and presented to the Governor for assent, he “shall not withhold assent therefrom.”
The CM also made a stinging attack on Ravi, alleging the Governor was keen to block the government’s initiatives.
He alleged non-BJP ruled states were being targeted through Governors, apparently by the Centre.
Stalin said if a “power” that can stop the House from enacting a legislation emerges, it will severely hamper democracy and that this was his apprehension.
It was the duty of a Governor to give assent to Bills passed by a House that has an elected government.
“He can seek legal or administrative clarification from the government if required and the government has to give it,” he said, adding such clarifications have been given in the past. “At no instances have such clarifications been not given. In such a situation, him (governor) not giving assent to the Bills passed by the Assembly due to his whims and fancies and returning them amounts to insulting the people of Tamil Nadu and this House,” Stalin said.
Those who could not stomach his government coming out with pioneering initiatives were trying to “scuttle the administration” and “want to do politics using the high post of Governor,” he alleged.
The government has taken up with the President and Prime Minister, the issues regarding the Governor, seeking solution, “and we had to knock on the doors of the Supreme Court only after these efforts bore no fruit,” Stalin added.
The Governor could not stomach the Dravidian ideology, equality, social justice, rational thinking and self-respect being engrained in the minds of people, he charged.
He said the Governor should aid in the state’s progress and use his proximity with the Centre to ensure funds for TN, get the pending GST dues or new railway schemes and be a bridge between the Centre and the state government.
“Instead of doing these, he only thinks about how to create hurdles for the state government’s schemes,” Stalin charged.
Though he was under rest for fever and throat pain, he was taking up the matter today in the interest of the people, Tamil Nadu and the Assembly, he said.
