NEW DELHI: At the internal security conference here on Monday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s speech — which became the talk of the town — could very well be taken as a wake-up call for the Manmohan Singh government in the Centre.It’s not just internal security, she raised strong objections to the Union government’s propensity to keep the States in the dark on foreign policy issues even when such decisions could impact the lives of the people living in the border States.Making a rather startling revelation, Jayalalithaa cited how her government was “taken by surprise’’ by the ongoing Indo-US joint naval exercise with nuclear warheads in her own backyard, in the Bay of Bengal off the Tamil Nadu coast.And, when an incredulous chief minister tried to gain information, it was plainly stonewalled. Despite the fact that the joint operation created panic among the local population, she was not allowed to have a briefing on the issue.The naval exercise, Jayalalithaa informed the gathering, “has been decided unilaterally by the GoI without taking the local State government into confidence. Such joint military exercises create panic reactions among the uninformed local public and consequently the local state government is taken by surprise, caught fully unaware.” To add to the injury, Jayalalithaa pointed out, “the Centre forbade the US Consulate General, Chennai, and senior Indian Navy Officers based in Chennai to meet the Chief Minister.”In other words, the indication from her was that the days of the Centre taking “unilateral decisions” without even showing the courtesy of informing the States are truly over.
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