With all its transgression the sneaky coronavirus has failed to keep politics at bay in Bengal. Even as State Governor Jagdeep Dhnakhar got embroiled in a twitter war with the Mamata Banerjee Government for its inept handling of the lockdown protocols, senior TMC leader Sudip Bandopadhyay slammed him for his partisan ways threatening to take the issue up in the Lok Sabha when it opens.
“In this hour of crisis the Governor is doing more politics than the BJP … We will request him to conduct himself in a more dignified manner befitting his high chair” Bandopadhyay said adding how the Governor by “acting in a partisan manner is putting his constitutional post to disgrace.”
He said “if he does not stop acting in a politically partisan manner then we will be forced to raise the issue in the Lok Sabha when it reopens.”
Bandopadhyay was referring to situations where the Dhankhar was “being wrongly informed by the BJP leaders and making adverse comments without checking the truth.”
The Governor had earlier alleged that he was not being kept in the loop about the situation emerging out of the corona outbreak. “Despite several requests and efforts made by my office to get in touch with the Chief Minister, Raj Bhavan remained ignored,” he said, adding “the lockdown between the Raj Bhavan and Nabanna (state secretariat) must end during this fight against a pandemic.
Ruing that his office was not getting any input from the Government he said “I would appeal to the chief minister that this is not time for anyone — for the government or political party to engage in theatrics. It is time for her to adhere to the essence of the Indian Constitution and brief me,” he said.
The Governor later also expressed concerns about alleged mishandling of the public distribution system with many people not getting their share of ration.
Raj Bhavan sources also said that he had expressed concerns over how some BJP MPs like Arjun Singh, John Burla and Subhas Sarkar were prevented from distributing relief materials to the public.
The war of words came amid fresh controversies over a “made up video” in which a poor man from Basihaat town in North 24 Parganas cried pleading hunger and sought urgent relief from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee but subsequently told the television camera that he being a part-time actor was asked by some local people to act like that before the video was made to go viral.
The TMC promptly pointed fingers at the BJP for the mischief soon after the latter went to town complaining how the relief materials being sent by the Centre were being misappropriated by the TMC workers.
While the Trinamool saw BJP hand in the fake video the latter washed its hands from it but insisted that the relief materials were not reaching the target groups and the people down there were starving. The middle-aged ‘actor’ of the video has since been arrested, police said.
Meanwhile, the Government on Sunday decided to introduce both rapid anti-body tests and pool-testing in hotspot and cluster areas as well as the ten districts where there has been no trace of corona infection thus far.
“The pool testing which has been successfully done in Holland, Maharashtra, Andaman and Nicobar Islands will now be introduced here in Bengal with swabs of five persons will be tested with a single kit. This will not only save the kits but also time,” said an official. Bengal has been under fire from critics who blamed the State for under-testing.
The Government’s decision to start pool-testing and rapid tests comes amid reports of 3 doctors of the Calcutta Medical College contracting the disease.
The said doctors have been hospitalized and their 12 other colleagues have been sent to quarantine, sources said adding the doctors of the gynaecology department might have been infected from the patients. Three patients of the same hospital were earlier diagnosed with corona.