Jagdeep Dhankhar a textbook example BJP's 'People’s Governor' model

Kolkata, Oct 23 While announcing the name of erstwhile West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar as the NDA candidate for the post of Vice-President, BJPs national president JP Nadda described him as the "Peoples Governor. The Opposition in the country, especially West Bengals ruling party Trinamool Congress between whom and the governor spats were a common feature during the last few years, claimed that the phrase "Peoples Governor" signified the definition of the post of governor for the BJP.

The opposition parties, with the Trinamool Congress being the most vocal, described the phrase as a latent confession by Nadda that an ideal governor is one who not only acts as the Union government's representative in a state but is also a clandestine political delegate of the country's ruling party in a state. They also claimed that Dhankhar's elevation to the chair of the Vice-President will encourage governors in other non-BJP ruled states to pick up quarrels with the state government, expecting similar elevations.

However, the Trinamool Congress's scathing criticism of the role of Dhankhar lost much of its sheen after the party leadership decided to abstain from the election of the Vice-President instead of throwing their weight behind UPA candidate Margaret Alva. The entire focus of the political debate shifted from the West Bengal government-Dhankhar tussle to the Congress and Left Front's argument that abstaining from the poll affirmed the clandestine understanding between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress.

takes a look at the history of the state government- governor tussle in West Bengal with special focus on Dhankhar's tenure.

Dhankhar's tenure as the West Bengal governor from July 20, 2019 to July 17, 2022 was marked by his frequent public confrontations with the state government especially chief minister Mamata Banerjee and assembly speaker Biman Bandopadhyay. What especially irked the state government and the ruling Trinamool Congress were his frequent Twitter messages and media statements hurling accusations at the state government. His media conferences within the premises of the assembly, firing salvos against the state government, equally irked speaker Biman Bandopadhyay.

Dhankhar frequently started holding back files and sending them back to the assembly secretariat with additional queries. While the Opposition accused him of behaving more like the leader of the opposition in the state, Dhankhar said that the state government was insulting him. The tussle intensified when in January this year, Mamata Banerjee announced that she had blocked the governor on her Twitter handle because he was mentioning her in his Twitter messages and abusing her administration.

After Dhankhar became Vice-President, several Trinamool Congress leaders said that this was a reward for harassing the state government. However, the CPI(M) and the Congress questioned that if such was the dislike of the Trinamool Congress for Dhankhar, why did the party abstain from voting against him in the Vice- Presidential poll.

Previously, during the Left Front regime too there were examples of state government-governor tussle though it never reached such a stage as happened in the case of Dhankhar and the Trinamool Congress.

There was a minor West Bengal government-governor spat in April 2023, a little less than two years after the Trinamool Congress-led government assumed office, ending the 34-year Left Front rule in the state. At that time, the then CPI(M) legislator and former state land & land reforms minister in the Left Front regime, Abdur Rezzak Mollah, was attacked and injured allegedly by Trinamool Congress activists.

The then West Bengal governor and former National Security Advisor, MK Narayanan described the attack as most unfortunate and asked the police to act impartially in such issues. Despite the Trinamool Congress' alliance with the Congress, which was in power at the Centre then, panchayat minister Late Subrata Mukherjee described Narayanan's comment as typical from a Congress-appointed constitutional head talking like a politician. However, the tiff did not escalate because of the intervention of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who kept silent but censured Mukherjee and asked him to refrain from taking the spat further.

During the seventh and last Left Front government from 2006 to 2011, there was another spat with the then governor and Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, Gopal Krishna Gandhi being in the limelight. After 14 people died in police firing on March 14, 2007 at Nandigram in East Midnapore district of the state, Gandhi, who had been time and again critical of the state government over law and order issues, made a statement that the firing incident had filled him with a sense of cold horror. Again, in November 2007, when a fresh round of violence broke out at Nandigram following clashes between the ruling and opposition supporters there, Gandhi issued another statement describing the clashes as the descending darkness before Diwali.

Gandhi's statements irked the ruling CPI(M) leaders and some of them launched a scathing attack and advised him to quit the chair of the governor and join politics. However, that spat cooled down as the then West Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee maintained a stoic silence on this governor- ruling party tiff without taking sides.

The first governor-government tiff in West Bengal was witnessed when governor Dharma Vira dismissed the United Front government led by chief minister Ajoy Mukherjee in 1967. The streets of Kolkata then witnessed several rallies against Dharma Vira by the CPI(M) which was an ally in the United Front government.

According to political analyst Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborty, tussles between the governor as a representative of the Union government in a state and the ruling party in an opposition-ruled state is nothing new or very unnatural. "But never had it taken such a murky shape as it happened concerning the current state government and Jagdeep Dhankhar. The earlier spats did not take a murky shape like this one since both the governor and the executive head of state knew where to draw the line. But here it did not happen. This is because the Congress's earlier attempts to control the state's affairs through the governor have been taken a step forward by the BJP through making governors act as representatives of the ruling party at the Centre," he said.