Tamil Nadu Assembly session begins on January 5

Tamil Nadu Assembly will convene on Wednesday for the first time in the New Year with the customary address by Governor R N Ravi, who assumed office in September last year. This will be Ravi’s first address to the Tamil Nadu Assembly.

The session will be held at Kalaivanar Arangam, which has been hosting the assembly sittings ever since the Covid-19 outbreak began in the country, instead of the old Assembly hall at Fort St. George, the seat of power of the Tamil Nadu government.

The government had in December announced that the session with Ravi’s address will be held at the Fort St. George but changed the venue yet again following an increase in the number of daily Covid-19 cases owing to the spread of the new variant, Omicron.

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After the address by the Governor, which will be telecast live, Speaker M Appavu will chair a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee during which the duration of the session will be decided. Besides the Motion of Thanks to the Governor’s address, the DMK government is likely to introduce and pass a couple of legislations.

The Governor’s address is likely to touch upon the Covid-19 spread, the efforts to attract investments to spur further growth in the state, and the DMK’s pet topic of federalism. The address is also expected to outline the reforms that might be announced in the Budget for 2022-2023 fiscal to be presented in March by Finance Minister P T R Palanivel Thiaga Rajan.

The opposition led by AIADMK will seek to put the government on the mat on issues like exemption from NEET for students from the state, “deteriorating law and order situation” in the state, and filing of “false cases” against party leaders.

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