Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar urged Mamata Banerjee to rectify the matter, and said such a “diversionary approach” was not acceptable.
Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Sunday kept up his criticism of the state government, tearing into Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Alapan Bandyopadhyay’s response to the concerns he had raised last week after the police allegedly stopped four BJP MPs from distributing relief materials.
The BJP has claimed that the parliamentarians were placed under house arrest.
In his reply, Bandyopadhyay told the Governor that “standard protocols” were in place and District Magistrates and Superintendents of Police were “following protocols within four corners of the law”.
The response did not sit well with Dhankhar. “OMG! Where are we heading? What a response of ACS Home to issues of curtailment of MPs activities. Bereft of any content,” he tweeted, tagging Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s account. “How ironical! While one can feed thousands daily, others can’t even step out! Very serious. Can’t leave at this cover up.”
The Governor urged Mamata Banerjee to rectify the matter, and said such a “diversionary approach” was not acceptable.
Bandyopadhyay’s response came two days after Dhankhar asked Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha to respond to the MPs’ allegations. He had also directed the bureaucrat to send “a firm directive to all the District Magistrates and senior police officials”, asking them to abide by the law..
The four parliamentarians who have accused the state administration of stopping them from helping their constituents are Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh, Alipurduars MP John Barla, Jalpaiguri representative Jayanta Kumar Roy, and Darjeeling MP Raju Bista. Their party colleague and Bankura MP Subhash Sarkar has been named in a case for allegedly spreading rumours about the death of two people.
In the statement issued by the Raj Bhavan Friday, Dhankhar had written: “I am deeply concerned at media reports, as also from direct inputs to me, through MPs, that their legitimate activities to play an affirmative role as representatives of the people to alleviate their suffering in the present challenging scenario, are being adversely impacted by outrageous politically motivated steps of the police and administration.”
He said the police and state administration cannot dictate the MPs’ actions, adding: “Such an activity by them is prohibited by applicable service law regime and amounts to major misconduct.”
Meanwhile, a TMC councillor from Hooghly’s Serampore filed a complaint against BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya for his comments about an alleged Public Distribution System scam in Serampore. Vijayvargiya was unavailable for comments.