NE NEWS SERVICE
CHENNAI, APR 10
Hours after the Tamil Nadu assembly adopted a resolution urging the Centre to fix a time limit for the governor to give assent to bills, Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi signed off on a proposed law to ban online gambling and to regulate internet games on Monday.
- Ravi is yet to clear nearly 20 bills passed by the Tamil Nadu assembly, including bills seeking to remove him as the Chancellor of state universities.
- Today’s development is being seen as a morale booster for the ruling DMK and Chief Minister MK Stalin
The Governor last month returned the bill with queries, which the ruling DMK government saw as a confrontational stance. The government passed the bill for a second time and sent it back to him.
Ravi is yet to clear nearly 20 bills passed by the Tamil Nadu assembly, including bills seeking to remove him as the Chancellor of state universities.
Chief Minister MK Stalin in the resolution against the Governor on Monday requested the centre and President Droupadi Murmu to tell the Tamil Nadu Governor to clear the bills within a timeframe.
The DMK and its allies have dubbed the Governor “an agent of the RSS and BJP”, referring to the BJP’s ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He has been accused of acting as a “stumbling block to the state’s development”.
Last week, the Governor’s comment during an interaction with civil service aspirants that withholding a bill is a “decent language to mean rejected” was condemned by Stalin and his party.
Today’s development is being seen as a morale booster for the ruling DMK and Chief Minister MK Stalin. “The Governor indefinitely withholding bills is against the welfare of the people of Tamil Nadu. His controversial comments belittle the dignity of the House and undermine the legislature’s supremacy in parliamentary democracy,” Stalin said.
Forty-one people have died by suicide across Tamil Nadu, reportedly after losing huge sums to online gambling and chance-based online games. Although a similar law was enacted by the previous AIADMK government on regulating online gaming, a court had scrapped it. The DMK, after it came to power, framed the bill based on the recommendations by a specially constituted committee under former judge Justice K Chandru.
