Stalin demands Law Minister’s resignation on NEET Bills’ fiasco

Source: thehindu.com

DMK president M.K. Stalin demanded the resignation of Law Minister C.Ve. Shanmugam in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday for not informing the House about the President returning the two NEET Bills, for 19 months.

Slamming the Law Minister for not informing the House even a couple of days ago about this, Mr. Stalin said Mr. Shanmugam should take moral responsibility and resign for not bringing this to the notice of the House and allowing the Bills to lapse.

Reading out the Home Ministry’s letter to the State government that the President had withheld assent to the Bills on September 18, 2017, Mr. Stalin said the State government had betrayed the people and the students by not informing about this letter. “Nineteen months have elapsed since the letter was sent to the State government. The Assembly does not even have the opportunity to pass these Bills again and send it back since the six months have lapsed,” he said.

Intervening, Mr. Shanmugam said the President had only “withheld assent” and “according to us… the dictionary with held means it is only stopped, it does not mean rejection. If the President had said he is rejecting the Bills and had sent it to us, we could have immediately brought it to the notice of the Assembly, so that the time limitation issue could have been addressed”.

The Law Minister said he was willing to take responsibility for it, but reiterated the point on the issue of the Bills being withheld.

Responding to this, Mr. Stalin asked why the government did not bring this up in the Assembly in the past 19 months.

“He should resign for not bringing the issue up,” Mr. Stalin said.

‘Issue discussed’

Health Minister C. Vijaya Baskar intervened and read out portions of a debate from the session held in June 2018, where the issue had come up.

“During the debate, I had said the President withheld the Bills and the government has sent a letter to the President asking why it has been withheld,” and accused the DMK of diverting the issue.

Protesting against the non-communication of the letter by Mr. Shanmugam, the DMK staged a walkout.

Following this, the Congress protested against Dr. Vijaya Baskar’s statement that the party was responsible for laying the foundation for NEET. Dr. Vijaya Baskar accused the Congress of being responsible for the suicide of a student, Anitha, after she failed to secure adequate marks in NEET. “She was pushed to that position only because of your notification,” he charged.

After a heated argument, the Congress too walked out. Mr. Shanmugam then read out a debate from the session held in February this year, where the issue had been debated.