The story so far: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) said on July 21, Thursday, that there was “no question of supporting the NDA candidate, especially Jagdeep Dhankhar” while announcing that it would be abstaining from voting in the Vice-Presidential election, alleging it was not consulted while deciding on the Opposition’s candidate. Mr. Dhankhar was, till recently, serving as the Governor of West Bengal, where TMC is the ruling party.
During the course of his tenure as the Bengal Governor since 2019, Mr. Dhankhar’s relationship with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government was marred by a continuing war of words, disagreements over various issues from law and order to bureaucracy, allegations that he was “working to further the interest of the BJP”, and calls from the State government to recall the Governor. TMC wrote to the President as early as December 2020, seeking Mr. Dhankhar’s removal from the post, while Ms. Banerjee said that she wrote to the Prime Minister four times seeking his recall.
Ties soured to the extent that the Chief Minister blocked Mr. Dhankhar on Twitter this year saying that “he was issuing tweets targeting and threatening” her and State government officials “as if we are his bonded labourers”.
