Governors were sent to disrupt the development of the States and they remained incorrigible despite the court pulling them up, he said, adding that State Autonomy would lead to India’s growth and warned against the spreading panic over it.
Chennai: Responding to widespread criticism over the Legislative Assembly initiating measures to raise the demand for State Autonomy,Chief Minister M K Stalin clarified on Thursday that it was not at all separatism, as some people have charged, and said it was sought with the aim of realizing the concept of unity in diversity.
In a message on X, Stalin said that there was no need for creating panic over the State government’s move taken on April 15 to form a committee to go into the relationship between the Union Government and the States as the Union Government itself had taken such initiatives in 1983 when the Sarkaria Commission was set up and in 2007 when the Punji Commission was formed.
Replying to the common question ‘what is the urgent need for it’ raised in various quarters, he said the present Union BJP Government was trying to paralyze the State governments through various actions, trampling upon the rights of the State and working against the States’ languages and culture.
Though the ground reality now was much worse than the time when former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi raised the same issue of State autonomy and formed the P V Rajamannar committee in 1969, the Kurian Joseph committee had been formed on the same lines because a strong India could emerge only if the States prospered by governing themselves independently, he said.
Presently, the Union Government was disbursing funds to the States in consonance with what was collected from them and for developed States like Tamil Nadu only 29 paise is returned for every rupee taken, something that had left many States with a begging bowl, he said.
Stripping the financial powers of a State was nothing but depriving them of oxygen through asphyxiation and the Union Government has been taking away the subjects in the concurrent list without bothering about the States’ rights and even enacting laws on them unilaterally. As far as those subjects in the State list went, the Union Government cared little, he said.
The NEP-2020 was brought in to chase the poor and ordinary people from the campuses of schools and NEET was introduced to smash the medical college dreams of the poor and underprivileged with imposing Hindi in the garb of three language formula with a view to turning people in non-Hindi speaking States second class citizens, he said.
Governors were sent to disrupt the development of the States and they remained incorrigible despite the court pulling them up, he said, adding that State Autonomy would lead to India’s growth and warned against the spreading panic over it.
