While a controversy is brewing over the governor of Maharashtra, West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar denied Bhagat Singh Koshyari the chance to steal all of the limelight on Tuesday.
Dhankhar addressed the West Bengal assembly to mark the Constitution Day, and with profound grief ended his speech asking the august house to reflect on his position as the constitutional head of the state.
The West Bengal governor, who has been hogging the limelight through his controversial speeches ever since he took office almost two months ago, said at the assembly, "I am constrained to indicate to all of you that on this momentous day of the commemoration of the Constitution Day, the post of the constitutional head of the state has been compromised. This is an unprecedented and challenging situation.... The sequence of events that have taken place bear it out. Such an outrage is unprecedented. I am sure in your deliberations you all will have the occasion to reflect on this and engage in soul searching."
The claim that his position has been compromised and the use of words like 'outrage' have created storm inside the ruling party of West Bengal. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took on Dhankhar minutes later and accused him of running a parallel government in the state.
“Even the prime minister does not do that with me,” said the chief minister.
“President of India is elected, prime minister is elected and so I am. Governor is selected and all the governors should keep that in mind,” she reminded Dhankhar.
Dhankhar had virtually avoided the chief minister while entering the West Bengal assembly as he was flanked by leader of the opposition and Congress leader Abdul Mannan and leader of CPI(M) Sujan Chakraborty. In his speech, he highlighted the contribution of Rabindranath Tagore, Sarath Chandra Bose, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Nandalal Bose, B.R. Ambedkar and Syama Prasad Mukherjee, but did not mention M.K. Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru. He hailed the contribution of Santiniketan in crafting the Constitution of India in order to explain that he loved Bengali icons as much anyone else.
He connected the spirit of Indian Constitution with Article 370 when he said, “B.R. Ambedkar refused to accept the Article 370 in Indian Constitution.”
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With his unprecedented public outburst in front of august house members along with guests like former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar and former governor of West Bengal M.K Narayanan, who spoke before Dhankhar, governor made sure that in the upcoming first session of the year, in which he is supposed to read out the government’s note, there could possibly be a twist in the tradition.
“And that will be serious Constitutional crisis, I can tell you,” said a former advocate general of the state.
Meanwhile, the chief minister gave a miss to a programme organised by the governor at Raj Bhavan.
