Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Tuesday asserted in the Tamil Nadu Assembly that the State has emerged at the forefront in all sectors and has been commended as one of the best-administered States.

In his customary address to the House, Purohit said the State government, under the stewardship of Chief Minister Edapaddi K. Palaniswami, continues to be guided by the spirit of the late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and has made tremendous strides towards realising the vision of making Tamil Nadu the numero uno State in the country.

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The DMK staged a walkout after an argument with the Governor ahead of his address over allowing them to raise some issues concerning the State.

The Governor said so far, the State Government incurred a total expenditure of ₹13,208 crore on Covid-19 relief and response measures from its own resources. It did not delay or reduce salary payments to its employees. By resorting to timely and cost-efficient borrowings, the Government protected the people from the further adverse impact of pandemic.

Grievance redressal

A new ‘Integrated and Inclusive Public Grievance Chief Minister Helpline Management System’ is being established. This will integrate all the existing grievance redressal systems through the Chief Minister Call Centre Helpline. With a robust routing mechanism and a dashboard for follow up, time bound redressal of all grievances will be ensured.

Citizens will soon be able to access the Government from the comfort of their homes by calling the Chief Minister Helpline at 1100, he said.

The State Government has obtained ₹13,300 crore so far as GST compensation, which includes ₹4,890 crore received as borrowings in lieu of compensation as per the mechanism put in place by the GST Council.

“It is a matter of satisfaction that the error that occurred in 2017-18 in the IGST allocation between the Centre and the States has been rectified and this year, Tamil Nadu has finally received its dues of ₹4,321 crore,” he said.

The Government’s action on recommendations of the High-Level Committee under the chairmanship of former Reserve Bank of India Governor Dr C Rangarajan is having a favourable impact on economic growth. “We are already seeing strong signs of revival in the economy,” he said.

Attracting investments

Even during the pandemic, Tamil Nadu attracted an unprecedented ₹60,674 crore worth of investment through 73 Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) generating employment for 1,00,721 persons. The State received the highest share of investment proposals (16 per cent) in India during April to September 2020, per the CARE Ratings report.

Out of the 304 MoUs signed in the Global Investors Meet, 2019, 81 projects have commenced commercial production and 191 projects are at various stages of implementation. The State has attracted investment into 149 more projects with a cumulative investment of ₹1,06,664 crore offering employment to 2,42,705 persons, he said.

A new Electric Vehicle Policy and Electronic Hardware Manufacturing Policy have been announced, and a new Industrial Policy and MSME Policy to be unveiled shortly,

The ‘BharatNet Project’ will be rolled out to one third of the revenue villages by March 31 and to the remaining villages by November 30. By combining BharatNet with TNSWAN, TamilNet and TACTV’s broadcast infrastructure, a convergent digital service delivery platform – ‘Unified Digital Infrastructure’- will be built to deliver high speed, scalable bandwidth to all households in the State, he said.

The State continues to be power surplus. In the past 10 years, 15,745 MW of generation capacity has been added to reach a total installed capacity of 32,149 MW. Of this, 16,166 MW of power is renewable energy capacity including hydroelectric power. Large investments have also been made to enhance the capacity of both the transmission and distribution networks to ensure reliable supply of power, he said.

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