Government can disband the Union-State relations committee, but not its ideas and contribution, says M.K. Stalin

In a letter to Justice Kurian Joseph (centre), the High-Level Committee on Union-State Relations’s chairman and K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty (left), its member, former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said the State government’s decision to disband the committee was unacceptable.

DMK president M.K. Stalin on Monday (November 9, 2026) said he was greatly disappointed by the disbanding of the High-Level Committee on Union-State Relations, which was expected to submit its final report by May 2027.

In a letter to Justice Kurian Joseph, the committee’s chairman and K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty, its member, he said the State government’s decision to disband the committee was unacceptable, particularly when the first part of its report had triggered constructive debates across the country and the research for the second part was almost complete.

“Like the Justice Rajamannar Committee, which became a milestone in the history of State autonomy, the Justice Kurian Committee would also have achieved a similar distinction by making an immense contribution to debates aimed at enriching federalism in the country. The report would have demonstrated that Tamil Nadu not only fought for its own rights but also for the rights of all States in India,” Mr. Stalin said.

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The former Chief Minister said the argument that the High-Level Committee’s mandate overlapped with that of the Tamil Nadu State Law Commission, constituted in August 2026, was unacceptable. “The differences between the two have been artificially created to dispense with the High-Level Committee,” he said, adding the government’s decision had wasted the intellectual wealth, experience and research accumulated on the subject.

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“Can a team of doctors performing a surgery be replaced merely because the management of the hospital has changed? The government may dissolve the committee, but it cannot obliterate its ideas and contribution,” he said.

Mr. Stalin said that, having constituted the committee when he was Chief Minister, he could vouch for the honesty and dedication of its members.