CHENNAI: CPI, VCK and PMK on Wednesday criticised Higher Education Minister P Viswanathan over his remarks indicating that the newly formed government was not bound to continue the previous regime’s stand that the Chief Minister should serve as Chancellor of State universities instead of the Governor.
The controversy arose after the Minister, responding to a question on the government’s position on the issue, stated that policy decisions would be made by Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay and that the new administration was under no compulsion to follow the earlier government’s approach.
Reacting to the remarks, VCK general secretary and Villupuram MP D. Ravikumar questioned whether the Minister’s comments had the approval of the Chief Minister.
In a post on X, Ravikumar said the statement amounted not only to abandoning a position Tamil Nadu had fought for as part of State rights, but also to disregarding the Supreme Court’s verdict on the issue.
CPI State secretary M Veerapandian said the Tamil Nadu Assembly had passed a Bill during the previous regime seeking to replace the Governor with the Chief Minister as Chancellor of universities. He said the then Governor had kept the Bill pending, forcing the State government to move the Supreme Court.
According to him, the legislation eventually became law based on the apex court’s verdict, thereby upholding State rights through a legal battle.
“In such a situation, the Minister’s statement strengthens the Union BJP government’s attempts to curtail State rights,” Veerapandian said, urging him to withdraw what he termed his “wrong ideological position”.
PMK president Dr Anbumani Ramadoss described the remarks as “shocking”. He said 10 Bills seeking to appoint the Chief Minister as Chancellor had been passed during different tenures of the previous DMK government and were eventually cleared by the Supreme Court under Article 142 of the Constitution.
Anbumani urged the government to focus on expediting the pending court proceedings and implementing the law, rather than attempting to alter the state’s position on the issue.