Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin is likely to move the state autonomy resolution in the Legislative Assembly today.
The resolution seeks to urge the Indian central government to ensure that states are given more powers. The resolution follows several others criticizing the policies of the central government. The Tamil Nadu Assembly had earlier passed a resolution against the recently passed Waqf (Amendment) Act, urging the central government to repeal the law.
On April 4, Chief Minister Stalin had informed the Legislative Assembly that the President had rejected the resolution seeking exemption of the state from the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).
The Chief Minister had criticised the decision to reject the resolution as a “dark chapter in federalism”.
The Tamil Nadu Assembly has also passed a resolution seeking to reclaim the island of Katchatheevu from Sri Lanka.
The resolution, which also seeks to ensure greater powers to the states, comes after a significant increase in ten bills passed by the Tamil Nadu Assembly, which became laws without the governor’s assent following a Supreme Court order. On 8 April, the Supreme Court had said that Governor R.N. Ravi’s withholding of assent to ten bills after the state legislature re-enacted them was “illegal and an error of law”. A bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan said that the governor should act with the support and advice of the state legislature.
The oldest bill to be passed had been pending since 2020. Sharing the “good news” of the Supreme Court verdict in the state assembly, Chief Minister Stalin called it a “victory for all states in India”.
