With the relationship between Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee continuing to deteriorate in the wake of his regular talk about the worsening law and order situation, Bengal Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee has reached out to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla accusing Raj Bhavan of regular “interference” in the proceedings of the House.
In a virtual meeting, the Bengal Speaker has accused the Governor of needlessly withholding the Bills passed in the State Assembly.
“I told the Lok Sabha Speaker about the excessive interference of Governor Dhankhar in parliamentary democracy and the functioning of the Assembly. Despite being passed by the Assembly, several Bills are lying with the Governor as he has not signed them. This is unprecedented in the history of West Bengal’s parliamentary democracy. Such a thing has never happened before,” he said.
Supporting the Speaker’s contention, senior TMC MLA Tapas Roy said, “Biman has done the right thing by bringing it to the notice of the Lok Sabha Speaker so that even he can see how democratically our Governor has been working.”
Reacting to the issue CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakrabarty, however, held both the sides guilty of failing to accommodate each other. “During our times also we had a Governor like Gopal Krishna Gandhi who was known for his partisan ways … still Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee accommodated with him and such peculiar situations were avoided,” he said.
However Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said the Governor was stopping only those Bills which are not worthy to be passed. “The TMC is trying to bulldoze its way with certain Bills … the Governor is only exposing the party’s lawlessness.”