West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Thursday said that the state government has not responded to the several matters flagged by him.
He wrote about the concern in a letter to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, which he shared on Twitter on Thursday.
Dhankhar has called Banerjee for a meeting at the Raj Bhawan next week. He also urged her to share information on the matters raised by him.
The governor has previously raised matters such as the alleged illegal appointment of vice chancellors to universities and police blocking reportedly the movement of Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, The Indian Express reported.
However, from the letter, it was not clear which matters the governor wanted to discuss with the chief minister.
Dhankhar and Banerjee have been at loggerheads over several matters since he took over as the governor in 2019.
Dhankhar has been a vocal critic of the West Bengal government. At an event to mark Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary in January, he had said the state had become “a gas chamber for democracy” and that he cannot see the “trampling of human rights”.
On January 31, Banerjee had blocked Dhankhar on Twitter because of his posts against the state administration. She had also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi several times asking him to remove Dhankhar from the post.
In the letter shared on Thursday, Dhankhar said that dialogue, discussion and deliberation were “quintessential to democracy” and necessary for governance.
“There are other worrisome aspects also which call for urgent consultations,” he wrote. “All my earnest efforts in this direction have unfortunately not fructified in view of the stance at your end. Such a scenario has potential to lead to Constitutional stalemate which we both are ordained by our oath to avert.”
Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh, however, said that the governor should not have made his letter public, The Indian Express reported.
“Governor may write a letter to the Chief Minister,” he said. “But it is not courteous to share it on social media. This is unbecoming of his position.”
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party said there was no harm in calling the chief minister for a meeting.
“This is a normal process and we see no harm in it,” party spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya said, according to The Indian Express.
“The governor, as the Constitutional head, can call the chief minister for a meeting. There are various serious issues which the Governor highlighted and the state government did not clarify.”
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