No Rest Till Constitution is Amended: Stalin

Chennai: Averring that there would be no rest till the Constitution was amended to fix timelines for Governors to give clearance for Bills passed by the State Assemblies, DMK president and Chief Minister M K Stalin said their fight for the State’s rights to bring in true federalism would continue and that all obstacles thrown on the way of Madurai city’s development would be smashed.

Reacting to the Supreme Court opinion on the Presidential Reference, Stalin said on Friday that the opinion of the Supreme Court bench had reaffirmed several key principles, including an assertion that the elected government alone could rule the State and that there could be no two executive power centres.

Until the Tamil Nadu people’s will was fulfilled through legislation, they would ensure that every Constitutional apparatus in the country functioned in accordance with the Constitution, he said adding that the court’s opinion in its answer to the Presidential Reference would have no impact on April 8 judgment in the State of Tamil Nadu vs Governor of Tamil Nadu case.

Among the other things that the court’s advisory opinion reaffirmed were that Constitutional functionaries much act within the Constitutional framework and never above it, that the Governor had no fourth opinion to kill a Bill or exercise pocket veto or simply withhold a Bill and could not indefinitely delay acting on them.

Now the States could approach the Constitutional Courts, holding the Governor accountable for prolonged, unexplained and indefinite delay in considering the Bills and deliberate inactions, he said.

Through the State government’s legal battle, Governors had been compelled to work in line with the elected government and be accountable for their deliberate inaction in response to people’s will through legislation, he said.

The court’s opinion had also empowered Constitutional courts to review the Governors’ action, not allowing them to hide behind Article 361, he said.

The present DMK government, led by Stalin, had been constantly at loggerheads with the Governor over several issues and the Government had accused the Governor of bias and acting politically at the behest of the BJP Union Government.

In his X message on the protest organised in Madurai by the allies of the DMK on Friday, Stalin said that the Union Government was giving a short shrift to Tamil Nadu with a view to stopping its progress.

They had betrayed the cultural capital of the State by denying the establishment of an AIIMS or the Metro Rail, he said and calling upon the people, who had gathered in large numbers for the protest, to intensify the agitation in every way.