Jayalalithaa to skip Centre's meeting on internal security to protest 10-minute limit on speeches

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa has decided not to participate in the chief ministers' conference on internal security organised by the Centre in New Delhi on Wednesday on the ground that the CMs are "railroaded" to finish their speeches within ten minutes.
"These conferences held by the Centre have become an annual ritualistic exercise where very little opportunity is given to the chief ministers to express their views on all items in the agenda", she said in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Claiming that this conference too, carries a long and weighty agenda of 12 subjects, the chief minister said uttering just their titles would in itself take 10 minutes which, "unfortunately, is the time being cavalierly allotted to the chief ministers to present their views".
Describing the CMs' conference as an annual ritualistic exercise, Jayalalithaa said she will depute municipal administration minister K P Munuswamy to attend the conference on her behalf.
She said besides the minister, the home secretary and the DGP would also attend the conference. "The current exercise too seems to be aimed at merely assembling the CMs of states to rubber stamp some measures pre-decided by the government of India without adequately considering the views of the states", she said.
"Further, the CMs are taken for granted and treated casually as was apparent at the last NDC meeting held on December 27 last year when I was forced to cut short my speech midway by a so-called time restriction, effected in a humiliating manner by ringing a bell", she said.
"I have given the most earnest consideration to all the agenda items and my speech gives the detailed views of Tamil Nadu on all the subjects listed in the agenda. The minister will deliver my speech at the conference, which may kindly be taken on record", she said.