Southern Zonal Council meet: Tamil Nadu CM Vijay seeks fair, equitable treatment of southern States from Centre

Southern States seek not preferential treatment, but fair and equitable treatment, one that respects fiscal autonomy, rewards performance alongside equity, and enables high-performing States to continue investing in the infrastructure, innovation, and human capital that drive India’s growth, said Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay on Thursday (August 20, 2026).

At the 31^st meeting of the Southern Zonal Council held at Mamallapuram and presided over by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Mr. Vijay said the southern States have consistently been among the principal drivers of the nation’s economic growth. As India prepares for the next Finance Commission, the fiscal devolution framework must recognise both need and performance. States that have invested in development, fiscal discipline, and demographic transition should not be placed at a disadvantage, he said.

Presently, after the introduction of GST, States find themselves with virtually no flexible revenue levers outside of petroleum and alcohol. There is already a provision in Article 279A(4)(e) of the Constitution that allows the GST Council to recommend tax rates, including floor rates with bands of GST. All State governments must work together to reclaim flexibility in tax rate determination, he said.

A copy of Mr. Vijay’s speech was circulated to the media. The meeting was attended by Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, Keralam Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan, Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, among others.

Inter-State water resources

Stating that no agenda for southern cooperation was complete without addressing shared rivers, he said “two principles must guide us.” First, the legitimate rights of lower riparian States and the livelihoods that depend on assured river flows must be fully protected. Second, the Supreme Court judgments, the awards of the tribunals, and statutory mechanism for river management must be implemented in letter and spirit. These principles are equally relevant across our shared river basins, he said.

On the Cauvery, the timely implementation of the Supreme Court’s judgment and the decisions of the Cauvery Water Management Authority remain essential. On Mullai Periyar, the safety must continue to be guided by judicial decisions for increasing the water level to 152 feet. Any upstream intervention with the potential to affect the rightful share of another State must proceed only within this legal and institutional framework, he said.

If we approach these issues with mutual trust, scientific evidence, and respect for the law, Mr. Vijay said he was confident of protecting the interests of every riparian State while strengthening the spirit of cooperative federalism.

Shared economic and logistics clusters

The greatest opportunity before the southern States was to think and act as a single, integrated economic region. “Our industrial strengths complement and reinforce one another. The manufacturing and service sectors already form interconnected ecosystems across States. By deepening these linkages, we can build globally competitive value chains that are far stronger than the sum of their individual parts,” he stressed.

Mr. Vijay then proposed that the Council champion common economic and logistics clusters across the Southern States, comprising integrated manufacturing zones, shared multimodal logistics parks, and seamless freight and industrial corridors that link production centres to ports and to global markets. These initiatives would make the South a far more attractive destination for foreign investment, and spread industry and opportunity into our smaller towns, driving genuinely balanced regional growth, he said.

“An immediate example lies before us. The proposed extension of the Bengaluru Metro, from Bommasandra in Karnataka to Hosur in Tamil Nadu, would create one of South India’s first interstate metro links, connecting Bengaluru’s Electronic City corridor with the fast-growing industrial hub of Hosur and knitting together the workforce and economies of the two States,” he said. This project can be a model of what cooperative infrastructure across State borders can achieve, he said, and urged that it be carried forward expeditiously with the support of the Union and both State governments. “Let it be the first of many such connections across the South,” he said.