Winter session in Assembly to be stormy

Chennai, Dec 3: The winter session of the Tamil Nadu Assembly, which begins tomorrow, is set to be stormy with the Mullaperiyar dam issue likely to dominate the discussions.

This happens to be the first session after the stunning victory of the ruling DMK in the local body elections.

The Mullperiyar dam issue, which was threatening to snowball into a political controversy, would no doubt dominate the session, though the state government had taken steps to find a negotiated settlement with Kerala.

Political parties in the state, including the main opposition-the AIADMK, in an all-party meeting convened by the state government, gave their consent for the government to hold talks with Kerala to find a negotiated settlement.

But after the Chief Ministerial level talk, held in the presence of the Centre on November 29, failed to yeild result, the opposition started blaming the DMK government for ''mishandling'' the matter and they are likely to take up the issue in the Assembly.

If the opposition tries to embarrass the government on the vexed issue, the allies of the DMK, including the Pattali Makkal Katchi and newly joined Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) would vouch for the Sri Lankan Tamils.

During the brief session, the Assembly might have to take important decisions like abolition of Common Entrace Test (CET) for the plus two students.

The Anandakrishnan committee, appointed by the government to go into the issue, had recommended abolition of CET and the house is likely to pass a legislation after discussing the issue threadbare.

The House is also likely to discuss about the government's proposal to make the use of Tamil language in court proceedings. However, a Bill to this effect is unlikely during the session as the Madras High Court, while favouring the proposal in principle, urged the government not to be haste in issuing a notification. In a major step, the House is also likely to introduce a Bill, seeking to implement the Value Added Tax (VAT) system, which had been eluding the state for several years.

If the ruling DMK would take pride in its victory in the local body elections, the opposition would try to undermine the victory, alleging about the violent incidents, especially in the city during the polls.

The civic polls results might have brought cheers to the DMK, heading the Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) in the state, but the confusions in the indirect elections had led to fissures in the front.

The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) founder leader Dr S Ramadoss had openly declared that the party would offer only issue based support to the DMK government, which was about 20 members short of full majority.

The style of functioning of the allies-the Congress, PMK and the left parties in the Assembly would be interesting to watch in the post-civic polls scenario.

UNI