Ahead of an election year, state autonomy is back in public discourse in Tamil Nadu with the DMK government of Chief Minister MK Stalin announcing the constitution of a three-member committee headed by former Supreme Court Judge Justice Kurian Joseph to review the provisions of the Constitution, laws and policies pertaining to state-Centre relations and recommend appropriate measures to strengthen federalism and state autonomy.

Announcing this under Rule 110 in the Assembly, which does not entail any discussion, Chief Minister and DMK president MK Stalin said on Tuesday that the panel, comprising former IAS officer Ashok Vardhan Shetty, and former Vice-Chairman of State Planning Commission M Naganathan, has been mandated with examining afresh Constitutional provisions and recommend appropriate measures to restore subjects moved from the State List to the Concurrent List, suggest necessary reforms to ensure maximum autonomy for states, overcoming administrative challenges.

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It has been asked to consider the recommendations of the Rajamannar Committee as well as the Sarkaria Commission and Punchhi Commissions on Centre-state relations in the context of changed socio-political and economic developments.

For the DMK, state’s autonomy is an ideological credo, and Stalin is following the footsteps of his father and late Dravidian patriarch M Karunanidhi, who constituted the first ever committee on Centre-state relations headed by former Chief Justice of Madras High Court PV Rajamannar. The recommendations of the panel were passed through a resolution in the state assembly.

“Every state should be given autonomy for the nation to progress and Tamil Nadu has been consistent in its demand for more state autonomy. At a time when no other state in India took an initiative on State autonomy, it was ‘Kalaignar’ Karunanidhi who in 1969 formed a high-level committee under the chairmanship of Justice PV Rajamannar… In 1971, the Committee submitted its detailed report and on April 16, 1974, the assembly passed a resolution adopting its key recommendations, Stalin said, adding that the Union Government then constituted the Sarkaria Commission in 1983 and the Punchhi Commission in 2004.

Bemoaning that the recommendations of these panels have been allowed to gather dust, Stalin blamed the present BJP-led dispensation of stripping the states of some of the important subjects in the State List including Health, Law and Finance. But, this was not the intention of the Constitution makers. “Our Constitution makers headed by Dr BR Ambedkar shaped our nation not as a Unitary State but as a Union of States envisioning Federalism. Contrary to this, today the rights of States are being steadily eroded and forced to fight even for basic rights from the Union Government,” he said and buttressed his arguments citing the National Eligibility-cum Entrance test (NEET) for medical admissions and the New Education Policy (NEP 2020) which override the social-justice based educational policies of Tamil Nadu. The NEP is a mask for Hindi imposition, he said, adding that discriminatory financial devolution from the Central pool robs the financial autonomy of the state.

Quoting Dr. Ambedkar, he said, “Both the Union and states are created by the Constitution and both derive their authority from the Constitution. One is not subordinate to the other and the authority of one is to coordinate with the other.”

The Committee is likely to submit an interim report by January next year and its final report within two years.