Guv faces TMC black flags in Murshidabad

Domkal/Krishnanagar: Trinamool Congress supporters greeted the West Bengal governor with black flags on Wednesday as the constitutional head of state entered Domkal town, travelling 500km by road from Raj Bhavan, to inaugurate a new building of Domkal Girls’ College, the first such in the district after Independence.
Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar didn’t pay attention to them.“Some people are in the habit of doing so. It is like those who start dancing as soon as the wedding band plays,” he said. “They speak out without thinking. It is time for them to read the Constitution, to believe in the rule of law, and to know about procedures,” he added while leaving after the event.
Trinamool’s Domkal block president and zilla parishad member Hajikul Islam, who led the protest, said: “It is a black day for our Constitution. Our chief minister, who heads an elected government, has come to the district. Our constitutional head has chosen the same date for coming to Murshidabad only to do politics.”
The governor later went on Twitter and said: “At Domkal, police was supportive of the handful of protestors while being totally absent at the inauguration programme.” He tagged CM Mamata Banerjee in the tweet.
State minister Chandrima Bhattacharya didn’t agree with Dhankhar. “Policemen were posted outside the college so that protestors couldn’t enter. The governor took an oblique view,” she said.
The governor made it a point to mention he travelled by road because he was denied a helicopter. Raj Bhavan sources said the state government was requested to provide a helicopter for the 500-odd kilometre trip. “The response was that helicopter won’t be available,” a Raj Bhavan official said.
The governor wondered how some people could accuse him of running a “parallel government”. Dhankhar said: “If I were running a parallel government, I would have come here in a helicopter.”
He stuck to his claim that he was not crossing the ‘Lakshman rekha’. “I intimate my itinerary to the government. I wrote to the CM a month ago that I am going to celebrate Constitution Day on November 26 at Raj Bhavan and invited the CM and Chief Justice to my place. I did it to take forward the legacy of my predecessor Keshari Nath Tripathi, who observed Constitution Day at Raj Bhavan,” Dhankhar said.
The governor, iterating his former experience, said no one from the administration was present at the college inauguration programme or at Krishnanagar Circuit House in the morning. “If I were running a government, trust me, everyone would have been here,” he said.
College chairman Anisur Rehman, a former minister, had invited Dhankhar. “We had proposed the inauguration on November 1. The date had to be changed to November 20 because the governor wanted me to. It was a little embarrassing for me because the administration was busy with the CM’s visit to the district the same day,” he said.