Kolkata: The bonhomie between West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the previous few months appears to be dissipating, with the 2 beginning to take jibes at one another on numerous points.
Barely 4 months again, Mamata was seen on 26 January at a ceremony at Raj Bhavan the place the CM gifted a guide of Bengali alphabets to Bose.
However the ties turned bitter in February after the Governor eliminated senior bureaucrat Nandini Chakravorty, who was appointed by the Mamata authorities because the principal secretary to the governor.
It additional nosedived on 4 April, when Bose issued a round to all state-run universities asking them to ship a weekly report. The governor additionally requested the vice-chancellors (V-Cs) to hunt his nod for any choice which has monetary implications.
An official from the training division informed ThePrint that the Raj Bhavan handed out its directions unilaterally. Citing a 2019 Bengal authorities rule, the official added that the Chancellor’s communications to the V-Cs needs to be addressed by the training division.
Whereas addressing a convocation ceremony on 10 Might, the Governor cited strains from Hamlet to ship out a message. “When there’s a disaster, be it constitutional disaster, judicial disaster or political one, a Governor shouldn’t be like Hamlet in Shakespeare — ‘to be or not be’,” Bose stated.
Mamata responded sharply to the Governor’s assertion the identical day, the primary time she spoke out towards Bose who is about to finish six months in workplace.
“When the Governor was given the put up of Chancellor in State-run universities, there have been solely 10 or 12 institutes. However the division of Greater Schooling runs the schools. I don’t intrude with the division. … We should take into account that all of us have limitations. At present, we have now 42 universities. The sooner rule of the Governor as Chancellor can’t proceed. He can’t management them and organize them to offer weekly stories. V-Cs will educate, work, deal with college students or give the Governor a weekly report? If they should give a report, they should give it to the State Authorities,” Mamata stated.
“We stand for the independence of universities. The governor is being ill-advised. We handed a Invoice within the Meeting to take away the governor because the Chancellor of state-run Universities, however he hasn’t signed it. He has not returned the Invoice. I urge him to both signal it or ship it again. We are going to move the Invoice once more,” acknowledged Mamata.
On 7 June final 12 months, the Trinamool authorities handed the West Bengal College Legal guidelines (Modification) Invoice, 2022 within the meeting that sought to switch the Governor with the chief minister because the Chancellor of the state-run universities citing the Punchhi Fee report which stated the Governor shouldn’t be burdened with positions and powers not envisaged beneath the Structure which can expose the workplace to public criticism.
Whereas Bose’s predecessor Jagdeep Dhankhar hadn’t signed the Invoice, Bose appears to be following the identical route in Bengal. Dhankhar shared frosty ties with Mamata earlier than he moved to New Delhi in August final 12 months after he was made the vice-president.
Schooling Minister Bratya Basu, too, got here out towards Bose, saying that the way through which the governor was bypassing the training division gives the look that he’s behaving like Macbeth.
“The way in which he’s surrounded by BJP’s Marcus and Brutus, he would find yourself like Julius Caesar,” he added.
BJP nationwide vice-president Dilip Ghosh, in the meantime, informed ThePrint that Bose was discharging his duties inside the Constitutional framework.
“The Governor has been lively and sending messages to the federal government infrequently. The training division is submerged in corruption. Many officers, together with the previous training minister (Partha Chatterjee), are in jail. The TMC doesn’t have the ethical proper to talk in relation to the training division’s progress,” Ghosh added.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Additionally Learn: West Bengal Governor summoned to Delhi. BJP miffed with the most recent bonhomie with Trinamool govt