NEW DELHI: For Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, Saturday’s National Development Council (NDC) meeting here was indeed “an occasion of candour”.Despite her absence, the CM drove home the point that the Union Government was completely out of sync with ground reality. “The Government of India seems to have lost direction and it is left to the State sovernments to face the public ire,” she said.Jayalalithaa questioned the relevance of meetings like NDC when the Centre had scant regard for the federal structure. She charged that the UPA government was trying to weaken states with too much interference, thus reducing them to the status of “glorified Municipal Corporations.” Citing the instances of Common Entrance Test for medical courses, Jayalalithaa said she was not sure that the Centre recognised the states as partners, leave alone equal partners, and respected their view points. “These meetings at best are ritualistic and are exercises in futility.”Particularly citing the issue of Tamil Nadu fishermen being attacked by Sri Lanka, she said that Centre seemed to think that the issue was a “minor problem” concerning Tamil Nadu alone. “The Centre seems to think that the lives of fishermen belonging to Tamil Nadu are worthless and do not call for any potent action,” she blamed.The CM also charged the Centre with step-motherly treatment to non-Congress governments. “The Central government seems to be hell-bent on penalising non-Congress governments. The Congress-led UPA government at the Centre does not seem to understand that the people living in the states under non-Congress governments are as much citizens of India as those in the states where the Congress party is in power,” she said.Noting that even the genuine needs and requests of the people were not met by the Centre, she said despite repeated requests for special assistance, funds were not provided to Tamil Nadu, while a special package was given to West Bengal only because the State government was a UPA ally.“When the Centre turns a deaf ear even to reasonable requests of the states, like restoration of the kerosene quota to mitigate the sufferings of the poor, or additional power to tide over a crisis situation, such meetings only cause frustration to the states and their people,” she said.Jayalalithaa alleged that several measures proposed by the Centre in recent months were all fascist in nature. “In the garb of preventing communal violence, the government has planned to introduce the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011, which was a blatant attempt to totally bypass the State governments and concentrate all powers in the Central Government, thereby rendering the State governments absolutely powerless and totally at the mercy of the Centre,” she charged.She said it was also an attempt, rather, a subterfuge, to keep the State governments under the constant threat of dismissal perhaps because of the Centre’s limited capability to use Article 356 of the Constitution in view of the Bommai case judgment of the SC.
Comments
0 comment