Chennai: The high-level committee on Union-State relations is gone. A Government Order dated November 6, 2026 winds it up and transfers its mandate to the Tamil Nadu State Law Commission, setting off a row that has pulled in parties on both sides of the assembly.
The three-member panel was set up in 2025 by then chief minister M.K. Stalin, chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Kurian Joseph, with retired IAS officer K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty and former State Planning Commission vice-chairman M. Naganathan as members. It submitted the first part of its report to Stalin on February 16, 2026.
The order says the Law Commission, reconstituted on August 7, 2026, already carries a broad mandate covering inter-state and Centre-state relations, and that the two bodies overlap. Records must be handed over immediately.
The DMK has called it vendetta politics. Stalin wrote on X that the government had said no to the state's rights and yes to the rights of cinema theatres, a reference to a decision allowing six shows a day in a film's first week. Leader of the opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin accused the chief minister of betraying Tamil Nadu. MP Kanimozhi asked why the panel was dissolved before its work was finished.
The criticism did not stay inside the opposition. VCK, an ally of the ruling TVK, urged a rethink, and its general secretary D. Ravikumar pointed to party president Thol Thirumavalavan's earlier statement. CPI's M. Veerapandian and CPM leaders P. Shanmugam and Su Venkatesan also opposed the move.
BJP spokesperson Narayanan Thirupathy welcomed it, calling it "an appropriate and practically correct decision". Electricity and law minister C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar said one of the three members resigned in May and that the new commission was created after consulting experts. He accused the DMK of using the issue to deflect attention from the Periyar Arivulagam book purchase row.