Tamil Nadu: BJP MLAs to attend assembly, likely to walk out

CHENNAI: The BJP has decided to take part in the special session of the legislative assembly convened on Saturday to re-adopt the 10 bills returned by governor R N Ravi without any amendments. The party’s four legislators, including Nainar Nagendran, Vanathi Srinivasan, M R Gandhi and C Saraswathi, are likely to walk out after registering their opposition to the bills.
The assembly is scheduled to meet at 10am. “The state leadership has told the members to participate and record the party’s views against the government’s move. The party is not boycotting as speculated by the media,” said a senior BJP leader. The governor had returned the bills seeking to empower the state government to appoint vice-chancellors of state Universities, dispensing with the role of the governor in the appointments. He returned two other bills of the previous AIADMK regime, conferring the state with powers to “inspect and inquire” into state-funded Universities.
"The governor is only scrutinising the bills as per the Constitution. He expresses concerns and the state government instead of addressing the issues, is politicising it,” said a senior BJP functionary. The BJP camp cited the “constitutional infirmities” as pointed out by the governor for returning a bill to ban online gambling in April. The Madras high court has recently upheld the validity of the legislation but said it applied only to games of chance not games of skill like rummy and poker.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event in Chennai, Union minister L Murugan said nothing constructive was being discussed in the assembly. “The assembly hails the prince, the king or discusses the fake Dravida model,” he said while criticising the state government for taking credit for the Union government’s welfare schemes.