Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet theory of competitive federalism has taken a new turn.

Recently, Haryana Chief Minister ML Khattar was in Chennai to inaugurate a Haryana government festival.  Khattar was reportedly embarrassed he could speak very little Tamil despite Haryana's commitment to teaching the language in the state. In fact, Haryana has employed 45 teachers to teach Tamil in municipal schools.  Khattar said he was happy to know that Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalitha speaks fluent Hindi.


The Haryana CM commented that PM Modi would be interested to know he was in Chennai competing for Tamil Nadu's largesse. Khattar added that Chief Minister of Telangana K Chandrasekhar Rao would be in Haryana for two days.


Nothing unusual in that except that such tours by CMs are common enough in the NDA government, but in the UPA regime none of the Congress CMs bothered to get out of their states.