Jayalalithaa resents 10-minute speech limit, to skip meeting

IANS/Chennai

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa said yesterday she will not attend a conference of chief ministers on June 5 as she did not want “to be railroaded” into completing her speech in 10 minutes,

The chief minister has, however, deputed a state minister and some senior officials to represent her at the conference on internal security.

“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 Thiru K P Munusamy, minister for municipal administration, rural development, law, courts and prisons, the home secretary and the director general of police to attend the conference on my behalf,” Jayalalithaa said in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Jayalalithaa said she had given the most earnest consideration to all the agenda items and her speech would give the detailed views of Tamil Nadu on all the listed subjects.

According to her, Mumusamy will deliver her speech at the conference which may be taken on record. The prime minister will preside over the conference.

“It is my experience that this conference held by the centre has 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.

“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,” Jayalalithaa added.

“As chief ministers of democratically elected state governments, we are equal partners with the union government in governance and expect to be able to make meaningful contributions to the discussions, so that the centre is made aware of the true situation on the ground. Only this will enable us to formulate policies and allocate resources based on real need,” she said in the letter.