Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy on Friday made a scathing attack on the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi for creating obstacles in the implementation of various schemes of the elected government in the Union Territory.
Mr. Narayanasamy told presspersons here that the time had come to make Puducherry a full-fledged State with special powers to evolve various welfare schemes and implement them without any hiccups.
The government would get a resolution passed in the Assembly when it reconvenes to urge the Centre to grant Statehood with special powers. Several political parties and their leaders have come out in support of the plea, he said.
He said that his counterpart and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Ministerial colleagues had been staging an indefinite sit-in protest in the Raj Nivas in support of their demands and to protest against the intervention of the Lt. Governor.
The situation in Puducherry was equivalent to the one seen in Delhi and the only solution to wriggle out of this piquant situation was Statehood for Puducherry with special powers.
Alleging that the Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi had been misusing her official position and intervening without authority in the routine administration of the elected government, the Chief Minister said that he had drawn the attention of Ms. Bedi on more than 18 occasions to her overstepping the statutory limits. But Ms. Bedi had been going in her own way.
“What is more perplexing is that the Lt. Governor is taking to social media to direct the officers to implement her decisions without the knowledge of the Chief Minister, Ministers and MLAs. Ms. Bedi is doing everything for publicity and for nothing else,” he said.
The NDA Government at the Centre was using the Lt. Governors to embarrass the elected governments in Puducherry and Delhi. The Centre was indulging in double speak in considering the constitutional status of Puducherry.
‘Bias against U.T.’
Pointing out that whenever the Centre wanted to enjoy the revenue to the extent of 50% earned by the Puducherry government, it treated Puducherry as a State particularly in the context of Goods and Services Tax (GST). However, when the question of sanctioning grants to Puducherry to meet its budgetary requirements was raised, the Centre treated Puducherry as a Union Territory keeping it out of the Central Finance Commission and the Finance Commission for Union Territories. This was highly condemnable, he said.
Referring to the split verdict in the case of 18 MLAs by a Division Bench of the Madras High Court, he said that the Chief Justice had upheld the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker’s ruling pointing out that the court could not interfere in the ruling given by the Speaker a short while after quashing the ruling of the Puducherry Assembly Speaker V. Vaithilingam who refused to recognise the three nominated MLAs of the BJP as members. The two different stands on the part of the Chief Justice was a cause for apprehension, he said.
