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”.
Mr. Dhankhar meanwhile, had accused the TMC administration on multiple occasions of engaging in “appeasement” and “communal patronage”, also saying that instead of “rule of law, the law of the ruler” was prevailing in the State.
Here’s a look at the major disagreements between the State government and the former Governor of West Bengal.
Law and order
The most sensitive flashpoint in Governor-CM ties was in the aftermath of the West Bengal Assembly elections last year, when in Ms. Banerjee’s government received a renewed mandate. Several instances of post-poll violence were reported in multiple districts of West Bengal in May 2021r, with Opposition parties — the BJP and Congress— claiming that their members and supporters had been killed. The ruling TMC also claimed that some of its members had died.
Mr. Dhankhar announced on Twitter that he would visit violence-affected areas. After this, he received a letter from Ms. Banerjee saying that if he made the visit, it would be “unilateral” and “violative of long-standing norms of procedures.” While she told Mr. Dhankhar to “desist from abrupt decisions”, he went ahead with the visit.
In his response to Ms. Banerjee’s letter, the Governor had tweeted that it was time to address issues being faced by people in deep distress, adding that he was “appalled” that a leader of her stature was “contemplating that in making visits, the Governor has to obtain orders from the Government”.
In the aftermath of the violence, Mr. Dhankhar, criticising the inaction by the Mamata Banerjee government and accusing the West Bengal police of being “partisan” during the violence, had tweeted that such actions left “no manner of doubt” that the violence was state driven. Calling the violence retributive, the former Governor had written in a letter to Ms. Banerjee that a “worrisome premise” of the violence was to “‘punish’, ‘discipline’ and instil fear of life in those who ‘dared’ to vote against the ruling party” in the State.
The State Home Department had responded, saying that the Governor making the letter public was “violative of all established norms and disrupts sanctity of such communications” and the contents of the communication were “are not consistent with real facts”.
More recently in March this year, after nine people were killed in retaliation to the killing of a village TMC leader in Rampurhat in Birbhum district, Mr. Dhankhar, flagging the “worsening law and order” situation in the State on Twitter, had asked the Chief Minister to visit Raj Bhavan for an urgent interaction. He wrote that the Rampurthat violence had strained the “already cliff-hanging governance in the state, from the perspective of Constitution and law”.
CBI action against leaders
Just days after TMC’s election victory last year, Mr. Dhankhar wrote on Twitter that exercising his powers as the appointing authority of ministers, he had sanctioned the CBI’s prosecution of former State Cabinet Ministers Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee, in the Narada Tapes case of 2016. In this case, video clips showed about a dozen Trinamool leaders, MPs and Ministers purportedly accepting cash on camera from an operator belonging to a fictitious company.
The CBI sanction and the arrests came after prominent TMC leaders were re-elected as MLAs (one of them defected to the BJP). The TMC argued that Mr. Dhankhar did not have the authority to sanction the prosecution as those in question were MLAs, which meant the Speaker of the Bengal Assembly was the authority. Mr.Dhankhar, meanwhile, cited constitutional provisions to argue that he was the competent authority.
The TMC also called the probe a “political” vendetta, asking why former TMC leader Suvendu Adhikari, who became a part of the BJP, was not questioned.
Charge of universities
The functioning of universities and the appointment of vice-chancellors was a crucial issue where the State Secretariat and the Raj Bhawan not only differed but targeted each other in the public domain. The Governor holds the post of ex-officio chancellor of state-run universities and Mr. Dhankhar held this position for 17 universities in Bengal.
The issue became such a sticky point that the TMC government accused Mr. Dhankhar of interfering with the functioning of universities and passed bills in the Legislative Assembly to appoint the Chief Minister as the Chancellor of Universities. TMC leaders said earlier this year that the Governor was “trying to become a super authority by summoning the V-Cs and issuing letters questioning different moves of the Higher Education Department.”
Mr. Dhankhar did not give his assent to the bills, and while they remained pending with him, chose an appointee to the post of vice-chancellor of a state-run university, receiving severe backlash from the government. He also tried to preside over convocation ceremonies at multiple universities but faced student protests at campuses.
Before this, the Governor on several occasions summoned the vice-chancellors of state-run and private universities. None turned up for multiple meetings with him. In July 2020, when no vice-chancellor showed up for a virtual conference with him, Mr. Dhankhar dubbed the education system in the State “politically caged”. The Chief Minister had then assured the vice-chancellors that they would not face any action. “ If there is any coercive action against them [vice-chancellors], Bengal will fight that,” she said.
Last year, when Ms. Banerjee’s administration appointed V-Cs for 24 universities, Mr. Dhankhar argued that the appointments carried no legal sanction, adding that he would be forced to take action unless the V-Cs were recalled.
Government schemes and bills
Another disagreement was over Mr. Dhankhar’s mode of communication with bureaucratic officials in the state, which reportedly involved direct summons and ultimatums to submit reports.
Ms. Banerjee last year advised Mr. Dhankhar “to refrain from surpassing the Chief Minister and her Council of Ministers and communicating with and dictating State officials, in excess of your power under the Constitution and directing them to attend before you”. She also advised him to refrain from “seeking reports directly from them”.
Mr. Dhankhar sought information about multiple schemes and operational matters of the State government. Alleging “unconstitutional diversion of funds” to Ms. Banerjee’s ‘Maa’ canteen, which provides subsidised cooked food to the poor, the Governor last December sought the amount and the source of funds spent on the scheme.
In another face-off in December, the Governor, through Twitter, asked the Chief Secretary to furnish information about the government probe into the Pegasus Spyware row. He later alleged that the government had given him “incomplete and selective” information about the inquiry panel for the probe, and issued another ultimatum.
Meanwhile, Ms. Banerjee this year accused Mr. Dhankhar r of tapping the phones of State government officials using Pegasus spyware. “Pegasus is being operated from Raj Bhawan. There is an all-India Pegasus... and from Raj Bhawan, phones are being tapped,” she said.
Ms. Banerjee also flagged that several bills of the government were pending with him, hindering the implementation of policies.
“We have been tolerating this for the past one and a half years. He has blocked every Bill. Even the appointments of State’s Human Rights Commission Chairperson and members of the Information Commission are pending,” she said in January. “Enough is enough,” Ms. Banerjee declared, stating that she had extended all courtesies to the Governor despite not being consulted about his appointment.
