‘Bengal becoming a police state’: Governor sharpens attack on CM Mamata

Amid increasing coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases, the political temperature continued soaring with governor Jagdeep Dhankhar alleging that West Bengal was emerging as a “police state” on Monday. The state’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) dismissed Dhankhar’s statements, made in a fresh letter to chief minister Mamata Banerjee, as “nonsense” and alleged that the governor was working as spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party.

In his letter, Dhankhar pointed to a “collapsing health sector” and “politicised public distribution system” in West Bengal, and alleged that the state was “emerging as a police state” where voices of opposition parties were being muzzled.

Countering Banerjee’s allegation that the governor was trying to “usurp power” in the time of a crisis, Dhankhar said: “People in the state know only too well who in the state is usurper and extra-constitutional fountain of power. Who runs government and syndicates. Who is this ABCD! An open secret! Surely, I am not the person.”

BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, have accused the ruling Trinamool of running “syndicates”, which loosely refer to groups forcing people to buy products from them. The Trinamool has rubbished the charges as “ill-intended political propaganda”.

Monday’s development was the latest in a “letter war” between the chief minister and the governor. Dhankhar has been at loggerheads with the government for some time. But the fresh letter war intensified after Banerjee wrote to Dhankhar on April 23 in response to a series of letters and social media posts by the governor. Dhankar then wrote two letters to Banerjee, on April 23 and 24, responding to which she wrote another letter on May 2.

“He (Dhankar) is keen on working as a BJP spokesperson. Political commentary is not part of a governor’s job. He has turned Raj Bhavan into an extension of BJP’s office,” said TMC secretary-general Partha Chatterjee.

Trinamool’s Lok Sabha leader, Sudip Banerjee, rubbished the governor’s charges as “non-sense”. “We would take a call whether to respond to his statements and letters at all. He speaks gibberish. He is merely playing his role in Centre’s plan to discredit Bengal,” he said.

The Left and the Congress, meanwhile, urged both the chief minister and the governor to stop this “letter war”. “What are they doing? Exchanging letters and trading barbs are not the need of the hour. They must stop,” said Sujan Chakraborty, leader of the Left parties in the state assembly.

The Congress’s Lok Sabha leader, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, too, urged both chief minister and the governor to stop firing salvos at each other and to focus on the pandemic situation.

“The controversy has been mounting for quite some time now. This is not a time for such time debates and controversies. I urge both of them to refrain to making comments at each other and to stop this letter war right now,” said political analyst Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay, former principal of Presidency College.