DMK will seek amendment to Constitution to drop Governor's address: CM Stalin

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK President MK Stalin on Tuesday said his party would make efforts to amend the Constitution to omit provisions mandating Governor's Address to the state legislature at the beginning of the year.

His comments came in response to TN Governor R N Ravi earlier declining to read the state government prepared text in the Assembly, with the Lok Bhavan claiming "inaccuracies" in it. The Governor walked out of the House without delivering the customary address.

In the state Assembly, Stalin said it was not good that the Governor refuses every year to read out the government prepared speech. Governors posing trouble happens in several states and it does not happen only in Tamil Nadu, he said in an apparent reference to non-BJP ruled states. This was the fourth such walkout in a row by Ravi ever since he assumed office in 2021.

At the beginning of the year, Governor reading out the government's policy statement is a practice being followed. When a governor repeatedly violates such a practice, a question naturally arises "as to why such a rule/practice should exist," Stalin said.

Hence, the chief minister said, the DMK would make efforts in the Parliament with the support of like-minded parties to drop from the Constitution, by way of an amendment, provisions mandating the governor's address at the start of the year.

Later in a social media post, the DMK chief said: "Let us demand a Constitutional amendment that Governor's Address is unnecessary." He added that it is for the sake of all the states ruled by the opposition parties in the country.

The four-year achievements of the Dravidian model government cannot be hidden from the people who have benefited from them just because the Governor leaves the House without reading the government-prepared address, he said.

On Monday, an English daily, in its editorial referred to the Tamil Nadu Governor as "recalcitrant" for "disrespecting the Constitution and the democratically elected government," and Ravi's actions today have proven that, the chief minister alleged.