Chennai: Governor R N Ravi was seemingly suffering from ‘Media Mania,’ a disease that was prompting him to see his name in media reports every day, State Law Minister S Regupathy said, referring to Ravi’s latest message on X, in which he had accused the State administration of inefficiency and corruption and mocked at the memorial for Keezhvenmani massacre victims in Nagapattinam district.
Challenging Ravi to give up his Governor’s post and enter politics for his own and State’s benefit, Regupathy, in a statement on Monday, said that a competition was going on between the Governors of Kerala (Arif Mohammed Khan), Telangana (Tamilisai Soundararajan) and Tamil Nadu as to who would grab news headlines the most.
He wondered what was wrong with the memorial constructed by the CPM in remembrance of the 44 Dalit workers who were killed by their employer’s men at the Keezhvenmani village in Nagapattinam district in 1968, which Ravi had criticized in his message by a carrying a photograph of it,
The Governor, in the X message, had said ‘A humongous high cost concrete structure in Keezhvenmani village as a memorial to commemorate the massacre of 44 poor labourers in the midst of thatched shacks of the poor all around by a political party that claims to champion the proletariat is not only ironical but a mocking insult to the martyrs and the poor.’
Wondering if Ravi wanted the huts around the memorial in Keezhvenmani to be removed, Regupathy urged him to make a visit to Ayodhya, where a temple had been built at a cost of Rs 1000 crore, and check on the conditions in the temple town.
The Minister also recalled the erection of a ‘green screen’ to block the view of the poor living conditions of people in Gujarat during the visit of a foreign dignitary and said that Ravi, without discharging the duties assigned to him, was indulging in everything else and also had the habit of retracting his own statements.
In that context he referred to the Governor going back on his earlier averment that Tamil Nadu should be called as ‘Tamizhagam’ after he was asked as to who bestowed on his the right to change the name of a State that had been in use for decades and his recent retraction of the statement denigrating Mahatma Gandhi by claiming that India won independence because of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
On the Governor’s charge, ‘It is tragic that the deserving poor villagers of Nagapattinam district are not able to get the benefit of PM Awas Yojana due to administrative apathy and alleged corruption,’ Regupathy said it was not becoming of a Governor to criticize the government in the media when he could had sought any clarification directly.
Questioning the basis on which Ravi made the charge of corruption, the Minister reminded him that he was no anonymous person to speak or write whatever came to his mind and asked him if had ever done anything good for the welfare of the State or its people.
As one who made frequent visits to Delhi for personal reasons, had Ravi ever bothered to speak to the Union Government on behalf of the State and its people, he asked and pointed out his penchant to not pass the Bills adopted by the State Assembly.
