Tamil Nadu Forms High-Level Committee On Centre-State Relations, Led By Kurian Joseph, To Strengthen State Autonomy

Tamil Nadu’s move to form a high-level committee on centre-state relations headed by former Supreme Court judge Kurian Joseph is a resolute move aimed at consolidating its legacy as a standard bearer for state autonomy. Having won a landmark victory in the Supreme Court against discretionary exercise of powers by state governors, the DMK government has doubled down and ordered a fundamental review of Union and state powers that will have salience in a fast-growing market economy.

The south clearly has a better record of economic growth and social development, but Tamil Nadu nurses the grievance that it suffers discrimination in fiscal transfers for ideological reasons. For the Narendra Modi-led NDA government, the recent developments are a major political setback. The reverse that Tamil Nadu governor R.N. Ravi suffered in the Supreme Court led to unprecedented authority flowing to the state government, which could notify ten laws using the principle of deemed assent.

The order has infused fresh energy into the long struggle waged by Kerala, where too legislation has been unjustifiably held up because the governor referred bills to the President or sat on them. Tamil Nadu has a history of asserting state autonomy, having constituted the P.V. Rajamannar Committee in 1969 and passed a resolution in the legislature in 1974 under M. Karunanidhi’s leadership on the autonomy and rights of the state. Chief Minister M.K. Stalin’s new committee will come up with a report that is bound to galvanise opposition-ruled states into seeking greater political and fiscal autonomy and push back against the centralising tendencies of the NDA government.

The constitution of the Kurian Joseph Committee is a moment of reckoning for the Union government, which has chosen a muscular approach to get states such as Tamil Nadu to accept the National Education Policy 2020 with its three-language formula and deployed governors who used Article 200 as a weapon. There is also the legitimate question whether southern states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka are getting their fair share of the taxes they generate through a large economic output.

Stalin has lamented that Tamil Nadu gets back only 29 paise for every rupee of tax it contributes. The composition of the GST Council and the weak influence of states in the body are other irritants. Tamil Nadu also wants subjects like health, law and finance to be part of the state list and guardrails erected against control of education, and therefore culture, through creeping Union powers.

These demands are central to a harmonious Union and will grow louder when the interim report of the panel is released in 2026, ahead of the polls due in the state. The debate that lay dormant since the Sarkaria and Punchhi committees will gain fresh traction, and that can only help make federalism stronger.