Kerala Governor slams Speaker's response to 'highly confidential' letter

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], January 29 : Lok Bhavan rejected Kerala Speaker AN Shamseer's claim that Governor Rajendra Viswanath Arlekar had sent a "confidential" letter regarding his policy speech to the media before addressing it to him.
According to a statement from the Lok Bhavan on Wednesday, the Lok Bhavan categorically rejected and strongly refuted the statements of the Speaker on the "highly confidential" letter addressed to him by the Governor.
"The original letter was served to the Speaker and it has not so far come to the notice of Lok Bhavan that any media has published the said letter. Lok Bhavan is also not appreciating the manner in which the Speaker has responded to the letter addressed to him by the Constitutional head of the state. The rules and decorum do not permit a press conference to reply to such a letter," as per the statement.
"The Governor has, at all times, adhered to constitutional propriety, institutional dignity, and established conventions in communications with the legislature. Public insinuations questioning these principles, without verification of facts, are regrettable and undermine the decorum of high constitutional offices."
Lok Bhavan urges restraint, responsibility, and respect for constitutional norms, and expects that future discourse on such sensitive matters will be guided by facts and propriety rather than conjecture, the statement added.
Meanwhile, Lok Bhavan Kerala on Tuesday defended the amendments to the Governor Rajendra Arlekar's policy address during the State Assembly Session, stating that he had asked the state government to remove the "half-truths" from the address, to which they agreed.
A controversy erupted when Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan accused Governor Arlekar of making additions and deletions to the policy address approved by the Council of Ministers, and requested the Legislative Assembly to accept the Cabinet-approved version as the authentic policy document.
In its response, Lok Bhavan stated that the Governor had asked that "half-truths be removed from the draft of the policy address. In response, the government had stated that the Governor could prepare and read the policy address with such amendments as he deemed appropriate. It was also indicated that the speech would be resent, incorporating the changes suggested by Lok Bhavan."