Chennai, Feb 18 (PTI) The high-level committee on Union-State relations under Justice Kurian Joseph has recommended that governors should be appointed based on the names approved by the state legislative assembly.
In its report tabled in the Assembly by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Wednesday, the panel suggested fixing a “non-renewable” five-year tenure for governors.
“The office of the governor, conceived as a neutral constitutional link between the union and the states, has increasingly departed from its intended role. Each episode of the gubernatorial overreach – manipulating government formation or collapse, refusing to summon the Assembly, withholding or indefinitely delaying assent, publicly criticising an elected government or turning Raj Bhavan into a partisan outpost of the ruling dispensation at the union – erode the confidence in the institution,” the panel said.
It was of the “firm view” that the Indian federalism now required a structural reset comparable in ambition to the economic reforms of 1991.
The Justice Kurian Joseph committee on Union-State relations, constituted on April 15, 2025, submitted its first report to the Chief Minister on February 16, after undertaking a detailed examination of contemporary federal challenges.
In its recommendations aimed at restoring the federal balance and strengthening genuine cooperative federalism within the constitutional framework, the committee recommended amending Article 155 of the Constitution to “bind the President to appoint one of the three names approved by a majority of total membership of the state legislative assembly as governor of the state.” It said Article 156 should be amended to provide a single fixed, non-renewable five-year term for governors, incorporate a new Thirteenth Schedule – Instrument of Instructions for Governors – codifying binding limits on discretion to ensure neutrality, prevent misuse, and reinforce federalism and constitutional balance.
The committee stated that federalism was never a borrowed theory or an ideological indulgence. It was a necessity.
The opening chapter in Part I of the report, tabled today, develops eleven foundational arguments setting out a clear and principled constitutional case for deeper decentralisation and enhanced state autonomy.
“Perhaps no part of the Constitution is more urgently in need of reform than its language provisions, which are rooted in the misconception that national unity requires linguistic uniformity. Comparative international experience points in the opposite direction,” it said on the language issue.
India must abandon the “One nation, One language” illusion, as true unity arises not from linguistic uniformity but from linguistic equality. “India should have a language policy anchored in fairness, inclusion, and respect for every language regardless of the number of their speakers,” it said.
It recommended an amendment to Article 343 to constitutionally entrench English as permanent official language of India removing its dependence on the Official Languages Act 1963, amending Article 345 to delete “or Hindi” to clarify that states may adopt only the languages in use within the state as their official language(s), and also the amendment of Article 346 to expressly guarantee English as the permanent link language for all official communication between the union and states and among the states inter se.
“Omit the anachronistic Article 347 that infringes state autonomy,” the committee stated.
It put forth a series of recommendations on delimitation, elections, education, health, and Goods and Services Tax, as well. PTI JSP JSP KH
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