The impasse over Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi rejecting Chief Minister M K Stalin’s recommendation to reassign the portfolios of V Senthil Balaji continued till late on Friday. While the Governor accepted part of the CM's recommendation, the sticking point — retention of the arrested minister in the Cabinet — remains. Ravi and Stalin, who have had a series of face-offs, locked horns again over Thursday and Friday, after the Governor rejected the CM's recommendation that the portfolios of Balaji be assigned to someone else. The Minister for Electricity, Excise and Prohibition, Balaji was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Thursday in an alleged cash-for-jobs case. The disagreement intensified after the state government Thursday night fielded Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy to deliver a detailed counter to the Governor's statement. Ravi first returned the state's letter, proposing the reallocation of Balaji's portfolios to Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu and Housing Minister S Muthusamy. He also contested Stalin's proposal to retain Balaji in the Cabinet without any portfolio. The Governor also questioned the rationale cited by the DMK government for the reallocation, "health reasons", calling the same “misleading and incorrect”. Ponmudy accused the Governor of selectively leaking the news of his May 31 letter to Stalin, urging him to remove Balaji from the Cabinet, and suppressing the CM's June 1 response, which detailed his constitutional right to appoint or dismiss a minister, and underlined that the Governor had no authority in such matters. The higher education minister said the Governor had no say in the composition of a state Cabinet, and that Stalin's June 1 response was a basic political lesson for Ravi. Ponmudy said that in his letter, Stalin had given the Governor the example of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who had been retained while in the Gujarat Cabinet, even when facing several cases. The minister also criticised Ravi's request for details of the ED's proceedings against Balaji as unconstitutional and interference in the administration of the state, saying it contradicted the constitutional principle of state autonomy. By Friday evening, the Raj Bhavan released a statement, still refusing to accept Balaji’s continuation in the Cabinet, as “he is facing criminal proceedings for moral turpitude and is currently in judicial custody”, while confirming the allocation of Balaji's portfolios to two other ministers, with the Electricity and Non-conventional Energy Development department going to Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu, and the other portfolios, including Prohibition and Excise, going to Urban Development Minister S Muthusamy.
