Assembly adjourned sine die after 40-day session

Chennai, May 14 (UNI) The Tamil Nadu Assembly was today adjourned sine die after a 40-day long budget session.

The session began with the Governor's address on January 23.

Following a brief session, the House was adjourned after adopting a motion thanking the Governor.

The Assembly met again on March 19 when Finance Minister K Anbazhagan presented the Budget for the year 2008-09.

During the session which lasted more than a month, the House sanctioned demands for 51 departments, besides passing as many as 42 Bills, including elevating Vellore and Tuticorin as Corporations, granting university status to Tamil Nadu Teacher's Education University, which was formed by merging the Lady Wellington College of Education (Women's) and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Education, and amending the Goondas Act to detain those fomenting communal clashes.

The House also adopted resolutions, including the one urging the Centre to intervene in the Sri Lankan Tamils issue and resolve the Hogenakkal Drinking water project issue with Karnataka.

The House after hailing the Supreme court order upholding 27 per cent quota for OBCs in Centrally-run educational institutions, adopted a resolution thanking Chief Minister M Karunanidhi for taking efforts in this regard.

Leader of the Opposition J Jayalalithaa, who had been abstaining from attending the proceedings, turned up for a day and led the AIADMK members in the walk out after Speaker R Avudaiyappan refused permission to suspend the question hour to discuss the Hogenakkal issue.

Several sensitive issues like phone tapping, Hogenakkal water dispute, Caste wall erected in Madurai, the arrest of Maoists naxals and smuggling of arms and explosives to the banned LTTE, figured in the session.

However, unlike the previous year, the main opposition AIADMK stayed back when demand for grants for all the departments were passed in the House.

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