Govt came fully prepared for the Guv’s googly
Leader of the House Duraimurugan and his lieutenants came fully prepared, unlike on January 9, 2023, when he caught the treasury benches off guard and forced them to troubleshoot at the nick of time.
Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi addressing the State Assembly on Monday. (PTI)
CHENNAI: The ruling DMK did not give any opportunity to Governor RN Ravi to spring a surprise on the opening day of the State Assembly this year.
Leader of the House Duraimurugan and his lieutenants came fully prepared, unlike on January 9, 2023, when he caught the treasury benches off guard and forced them to troubleshoot at the nick of time.
Duraimurugan on Monday came with a readymade resolution to negate the manoeuvres of the Governor in case he intended to throw an unsuspecting googly at the treasury benches.
And rightly so, A seasoned Duraimurugan was busy glancing at the short note or the text of the resolution kept in his blue file repeatedly even before the Governor justified the reason for not reading out all but the first paragraph and last line of the prepared speech. So anxious was the octogenarian that he attempted to intervene and move the resolution on two instances only to be prodded back to his seat Chief Minister M K Stalin once.
The government, wary of the antics of the titular head, came so well prepared that the Leader of the House and the Assembly secretariat frequently discussed the contents of the resolution on the corridor behind the Speaker and Governor's chair between the governor abrupt wrapping up of the speech in four minutes and the 45 minutes during which Speaker M Appavu read out the Tamil version of the entire speech. And of course it all happened with the notes being exchanged and the resolution proofread by Chief Minister MK Stalin at the change of every comma in the resolution. The treasury benches were so organized that a cordless microphone concealed in a black handbag was readily placed to the left of Duraimurugan by the officers to readily move the resolution seeking to relax Rule 17 of the House as soon as the Speaker read out the entire Tamil speech.
Ironically, the only element of the opening day's proceedings happened to be the presence of the opposition AIADMK which sat through the entire session without objecting to the resolution moved by the government.