Tamil Nadu CM Busy Now, Will meet Governor Later

Chennai: Governor R N Ravi will have to wait for a few more days to meet Chief Minister M K Stalin, as instructed by the Supreme Court, to resolve the impasse over his referring of Bills, passed by the State Assembly for the second time, to the President for approval.

After the Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, Justice J B Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Mishra, averring that the Bills could not be send to the President, told Ravi to sort out the matter with Stalin, a call from Raj Bhavan was reportedly received at the Chief Minister’s office saying that the Governor was free to have the meeting.

However, since the Chief Minister was preoccupied with the relief and mitigation work to provide immediate succor to the people affected by the devastation caused by Cyclone Michaung and in view of visit of the official team from the Union Home Ministry to Chennai, Raj Bhavan was informed that Stalin was not free at the moment to have the meeting.

It is learnt that the Chief Minister would fix the date of the meeting after the work on flood mitigation was over and after he became free of the pressing immediate official engagements.

With the case, filed on October 31 by State Chief Secretary Shiv Das Meena accusing Ravi of ‘toying away with the citizen’s mandate, coming up before the court again for hearing, the State government had said that the Chief Minister was ready to meet the Governor.

The impasse was caused by the Governor who returned 10 of the 12 Bills, passed by the State Assembly and pending approval since 2020, without citing any reason for dismissing them, impelling the State Assembly Speaker M Appavu to call for a special session, in which all the returned Bills were readopted.

Sending the readopted Bills to the President for consent was not appropriate under Section 200 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court had stated while asking the Governor and Chief Minister to sort out the matter.