Ex-bureaucrats urge Tamil Nadu to restore high-level committee on Union-state relations

A group of former bureaucrats on Saturday urged the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam-led Tamil Nadu government to restore the high-level committee on Union–state relations that was constituted under the previous Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam administration.

The three-member committee, which was disbanded on November 6, had been set up in April 2025 to review the constitutional and legal provisions relating to the relationship between the Union government and the states.

The decision had been announced by former Chief Minister MK Stalin amid strained ties between Tamil Nadu and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government at the Centre on several matters, including the delimitation of Lok Sabha seats, the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test and the National Education Policy.

The mandate of the committee, headed by former Supreme Court judge Kurian Joseph, included the review of Constitutional provisions, laws and policies on Centre-state relations and recommending ways to restore subjects moved from the State List of the Constitution to the Concurrent List.

In February, the committee submitted its first report to Stalin, who was voted out of power in the Assembly election results declared on May 4.

TVK had emerged as the single largest party in the state and formed the government in alliance with the Congress, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, the Indian Union Muslim League, and outside support from Left parties.

In a government order on November 6, the TVK-led government disbanded it, saying that it was a “non-statutory body” and that the Tamil Nadu State Law Commission had been reconstituted on August 7 with the mandate of examining Union-state and interstate relations, reported The News Minute.

Decision to disband panel ‘incomprehensible’

On Saturday, in their letter to Chief Minister Joseph Vijay, the former bureaucrats said they find the discontinuation of the committee “incomprehensible”.

The Constitutional Conduct Group also pointed out that “there is no bar on a non-statutory body undertaking an inquiry into Centre-state relations and suggesting measures for a healthier and more responsive federal structure”.

Regarding the “overlap” between the high-level committee and the state law commission, it said “there is no evidence on record” that the commission has, in the over three decades of its existence, “examined issues relating to Union-state relations”.

The former bureaucrats also said that transferring the task of preparing part two of the report the panel had submitted in February to the law commission “is a retrograde step”.

“There is every likelihood of loss of institutional knowledge acquired in the HLC [high-level committee] research efforts and inconsistencies in constitutional interpretation and analytical approach,” they added. “An integrated, coherent analysis of the complex issues involved requires a single body applying its mind.”

They said that the TVK’s government decision to disband the committee and remove the February report from its websites could be because the current administration “may not fully subscribe to the ideal of a genuinely federal democracy, in which power is decentralised to the lowest levels of governance”.

Or, the action could have been taken because “your government may be reluctant to displease the Union government and the ruling party at the Centre, a government and party that are obsessed with the ideology of an overarching centralisation of Constitutional functions”.

“We trust that your government will affirm its commitment to a strong federal democracy, with devolution of powers to local government institutions,” said the former bureaucrats.

Edited by Sneha.