Tamil Nadu and West Bengal Chief Ministers Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee decided to skip the Wednesday’s Chief Ministers’ Conference on internal security conveyed by the Centre. Though Mamata didn’t specify the reasons, Jayalalithaa said “these ritualistic conferences” offered very little to the CMs to express their views.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, excerpts of which were released to the media, Jayalalithaa, who felt humiliated during the National Development Council meeting in December 2012 when she was asked to wind up her speech mid-way through, said, “These ritualistic conferences chaired by the Prime Minister offered very little opportunity to the Chief Ministers to express their views.” Jayalalithaa had walked out of the NDC meeting in December as a mark of protest and a number of her counterparts from other States had expressed their solidarity with her.
“This conference too carries a long and weighty agenda of 12 subjects. 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,” said Jayalalithaa in her letter.
She reminded the Prime Minister that the Chief Ministers were equal partners with the Union Government in governance and is expected to make meaningful contribution to the discussions so that the Centre is made aware of the true situation on the ground. “The conferences with Chief Ministers on important issues have been reduced to a routinised ritual rather than a consultative process with the Chief Ministers constantly guillotined to cut short their speeches,” said Jayalalithaa.
She said the current conference too was aimed at assembling the Chief Ministers of States to rubber stamp some measures pre-decided by the Union Government without adequately considering the views of the States. “Rather than attending a conference where Chief Ministers are being railroaded to finish their speeches within 10 minutes and to merely lay a speech on the table, I am deputing KP Munusamy, the Minister for Municipal Administration, Sheela Balakrishnan, the chief secretary and the Director General of Police to attend
the conference on my behalf,” said Jayalalithaa.
Mamata Banerjee has also deputed Finance Minister Amit Mitra for the meeting. The CMs’ conference, chaired by Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
There will be separate session of nine left Wing Extremism-affected States’. Chief Ministers will discuss the strategies on dealing with Maoist menace in the wake of recent Chhattisgarh killings.
“The participants will review internal security situation in the country. Police reforms, capacity building, strengthening of counters terrorism capabilities and intelligence apparatus, National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) and focus on ongoing and new initiatives will be on the agenda. Other issues to be deliberated upon include Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & System (CCTNS), issues related to left Wing Extremism (lWE), border management, coastal security and other Centre-State issues. A separate session will deal with lWE issues
with the Chief Ministers of Naxal affected States,” said Home Ministry in statement on Tuesday.
The Congress flayed Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for planning to skip the anti-Naxal meeting of Chief Ministers called by Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde saying that States should not indulge in petty politics on such important issues. Congress spokesman Shakeel Ahmad said that if one or two Chief Ministers don’t come it will not reduce the seriousness of the meeting. Naxalism is the most important problem and after the recent unfortunate incident in Chhattisgarh the threat perception has grown.