Outgoing Governor of West Bengal, Keshari Nath Tripathi, on Saturday said that chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s appeasement politics was adversely affecting the social harmony of the state. He said this in an interview with news agency PTI.
“Her policy of appeasement has the effect of adversely affecting societal harmony… I think she should look at every citizen equally. I believe that every citizen of West Bengal should be dealt with equally without discrimination,”he said while answering a question.
Answering a question, Tripathi added that “discrimination is apparent. Her statements show the discrimination.”
In the interview, the outgoing Governor was also quoted saying that Banerjee has the vision and power to implement her decisions. “Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has got vision, she has power to implement her decisions but she should be restrained also. She becomes sentimental on occasions, so she has to keep a control on it,” he said in the interview.
Following the interview with PTI, Chatterjee said that such words never came from Tripathi all these years, and perhaps, as his term was coming to an end in West Bengal, he needed to win some brownie points from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), keeping an eye on the future.
Banerjee has been on collision course with Tripathi on a number of occasions in the past. The most talked about clash was perhaps in July 2017, when Banerjee had said that she had been so insulted and hurt by Tripathi’s words that she had contemplated resigning from her position. The Governor had reportedly called Banerjee to discuss communal violence that broke out in the northern fringes of Kolkata. The Bengal CM had then said that the governor had “threatened” and “humiliated” her and spoke like a “BJP block president” instead of maintaining a neutral position.
Later, Trinamool senior leader Partha Chatterjee too said that Tripathi was acting like a “BJP cadre” and Raj Bhawan was “BJP’s party office”. The Governor had then issued a statement saying he was aware of his “constitutional obligations and limitations and needed no lessons from anyone on this count”. He had said that Chatterjee’s words were an “attempt to cover the lapses of the state government and divert attention from the main issue of law and order”.
Jagdeep Dhankar will join as the new Governor of West Bengal on July 30.
