Tamil Nadu FM slams Governor Ravi for remark on Stalin's foreign trip

Taking strong exception to Governor RN Ravi’s indirect remark on Chief Minister MK Stalin’s overseas trip to attract investment, Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu on Tuesday (June 6) asked the Governor to refrain from using his office to make political statements. Stalin recently undertook a trip to Singapore and Japan.

In an oblique reference to CM Stalin’s foreign trip, Governor Ravi had a day earlier said that an environment has to be created to attract investors. Addressing vice-chancellors of state and private universities of Tamil Nadu at the Raj Bhavan in Udhagamandalam, Ravi had said, “Investors will not come just because we ask them or we go and have a talk. They are hard bargainers. In our country, there are many states which are doing it.”

Describing the Governor’s comment as a veiled attack Stalin, Thennarasu said Ravi belittled the foreign visit of the TN chief minister, who was striving to improve the economy of the state by attracting foreign investments. He rather took a dig at Ravi and said, “I think by attempting to criticise our chief minister, the Governor has fired a missile at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who as chief minister of Gujarat visited China in 2011 to attract investment for this state.”

In his address, the Governor had extolled Haryana saying that the state had a foreign direct investment equivalent to Tamil Nadu. “We have to create an ecosystem for global giants for which the essential element is to create competent, appropriately skilled human resources only then we will avail ourselves of the advantage of this opportunity,” Ravi had said.

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Speaking to reporters in Chennai, Thennarasu sought to know if the Governor could undermine TN chief minister’s overseas visits, would he then accept that Modi’s visits to China, Switzerland, Japan, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia were similar?

Visits to foreign countries by any chief minister were only aimed at improving the state’s economy, he said, even as he called upon the Governor to desist from using the office of the Raj Bhavan to make political statements.
Thennarasu, who had been the state industries minister, said Stalin’s two-nation trip resulted in Tamil Nadu clinching investment proposals of over Rs 3,000 crore.

Investment apart, Tamil Nadu has been faring better in several sectors including education he said and wondered how the Governor, being the chancellor of universities, could suppress facts on such significant milestones.

(With agency inputs)