On July 30, 2019 when Jagdeep Dhankhar took oath as the Governor of West Bengal, not many in the political and social circles were familiar with his name. The last public office Mr. Dhankhar held was in 1998 as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Rajasthan, more than two decades before assuming the office of a Governor. Cut to 2022: the 71-year-old politician has been nominated as the Vice-Presidential candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). What has led to his fame perhaps is his eventful but rather controversial term as the Governor of West Bengal.
Centre-State relations, particularly the role of the Governor, has been a subject of much debate in West Bengal, a State that has been ruled by Opposition parties for the past five decades. Even in the past, Governors of the State and elected governments of West Bengal have had differences, but the situation took a distinctly different turn with Mr. Dhankhar in office. His three-year term was mired in regular public spats with the Trinamool Congress government. From trivial issues like seating arrangements at government events to withholding assent to Bills, a war of words between Raj Bhawan and the State Secretariat was a regular affair.
Mr. Dhankhar minced no words while targeting the Trinamool government on sensitive issues such as law and order and post-poll violence. While these developments kept him consistently in the national headlines, it also appeared that he was playing a partisan role in State politics, in tandem with the BJP’s demands. Things reached such an extent that the State government passed a Bill replacing the Governor with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as Chancellor of State-run Universities.
