Social Justice, the Cause for Conflict: CM

Chennai: The views expressed publicly by Governor R N Ravi on Tamil culture, literature and social structure gave one a clear indication that the friction between him and the State Assembly stemmed not from his disapproval of the Bills alone but from social justice, which was behind his throwing the spokes into the State’s wheels of development, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Saturday.

Moving a resolution in the Assembly seeking to re-enact the 10 Bills that were returned by the Governor suddenly on November 13 under Section 200 of the Constitution, Stalin said the DMK had won the hearts of the people through a plethora of pioneering welfare schemes but those who could not tolerate the government’s popularity were playing politics using the Governor to paralyse the administration.

Though the Governor’s post needed to be abolished, as long as it existed in the Constitution, convention demanded that the Governor functioned only within the parameters of the democratic principles but on the contrary, Governors were used to give trouble to State governments ruled by non-BJP parties, he said.

Giving details on the efforts made by the Tamil Nadu government to improve its relationship with the Governor, he said a letter was handed over to the President Drupadi Murmu by MPs from the State requesting her to advise Ravi to give up on his confrontationist approach.

Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi was apprised of the State’s Government’s problem with the Governor before it knocked at the doors of the Supreme Court with a complete inventory of Bills and files pending with him, he said.

Only after the Supreme Court took cognizance of the matter did he return the 10 Bills – two of them enacted during the previous AIADMK regime and eight by the present government – in a hurry, totally unconcerned about the pending case, he said.

Normally a special session of the Assembly would be convened only when there was an important event or when a key resolution was needed to be passed, Stalin said, adding that Saturday’s special session was necessitated by the Governor, who was duty bound to give his nod to the Bills passed in the House, sending back the Bills without his consent.

Whenever legal or administrative doubts were raised over the Bills by Governors, they would be clarified through the departments concerned and many such clarifications had been given in the past with not a single query going unanswered by the Assembly, he said.

The oldest Assembly in the country with a hundred year old democratic tradition had been instrumental in bringing in laws that ushered in several social changes and had framed the democratic norms that governed its functioning and even observers from the British Parliament had visited it to understand the way it was conducted, he said.

It was in this House legislations were passed to bring in reformations in the social, political and economic spheres, adhering to principles of equality and social justice, to frame laws and draw up plans from development,  earning a name for itself as the best legislature in the country for it people’s welfare programmes, he said.

When the State government was facing several obstacles for implementing its welfare schemes aimed at ushering in social justice, inclusive growth, equality, women’s rights, secularism and concern for all living beings, the Governor, using his cordial relationship with the Union Government, could have helped the State in getting more funds, he said.

If a State government elected by crores of people was hampered from enacting laws on the basis of the Constitutional provisions and impeded in its functioning, it was a sign of India being led to an abysmal situation that would not augur well for democracy, he said.