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Tamil Nadu
By Our Special Correspondent
Ms. Jayalalithaa has also written to the Chief Ministers and administrative heads of all the coastal States and Union Territories, including Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and West Bengal, appealing to them to join together in resisting the "unacceptable withdrawal of powers from the States." A few days after lambasting the Union Environment Minister and DMK MP, T. R. Baalu, in the Assembly, the Chief Minister, in separate letters to A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, A. B. Vajpayee and L. K. Advani, complained about the "peremptory and ill-considered" action of the Environment Ministry in amending the coastal regulation zone notification. "It is most disconcerting and troubling that the Environment Ministry suo motu, with no ostensible cause for action, has summarily withdrawn the powers of the State which were given by the very same Ministry (in 1997) after due consultations with States," she said. The 1997 notification conferred absolute powers on the States to regulate developments in urban areas, categorised as coastal regulation zone II. With the latest notification, the Minister "with one fell stroke, has removed the powers of the States to approve projects of over Rs. 5 crores in the urban areas." The latest notification "cuts at the very roots and foundations of the Federal structure of the country and undermines the healthy practices and conventions of the polity." And, it "jeopardises the role of the State Governments guaranteed under the Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court in its various rulings from time to time," she asserted. Calling upon them to intervene, set right the "injustice done to the States" by restoring status quo ante, she said, "exercise of powers without any consultation with the States has a very bad precedent and it is important in the evolving tapestry of relations between the Centre and the State that such exercise of power does not arise." In her letters to the heads of the coastal States and Union Territories, she said the abrogation of powers through the notification would "reduce the State Governments to glorified municipalities." Earlier, in a suo motu statement in the Assembly, Ms. Jayalalithaa announced Rs. 9 lakh compensation from the Chief Minister's relief fund to a former student of Queen Mary's College, M. Sheela, who had sustained grievous injuries, when a verandah of the college collapsed 12 years ago, in April 1991. The plight of the student had not been brought to her notice "due to a conspiracy" till recently. Only when the Advocate-General, in his arguments before the Madras High Court, referred to the sufferings of Ms. Sheela, Ms. Jayalalithaa said, she had sought full details. On getting the entire information about Ms. Sheela, she was "shocked". And, immediately she ordered compensation for the student, the Chief Minister told the House this morning. A couple of days ago, while relating the plight of Ms. Sheela, the Chief Minister had asked what the "self-proclaimed public-spirited" litigants, who had challenged the proposed demolition of the QMC, had done to alleviate her suffering. In response, the DMK president, M. Karunanidhi, had asked why she had not given the compensation when she was in power between 1991 and 2001.
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