Centre petty in a needless confrontation with Bengal

The manner in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “review meeting” — or, really speaking, so-called review meeting, in light of everything that’s transpired since — concerning the devastation caused by the cyclone Yaas with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was conducted, it would seem the idea was not so much to discuss cyclone-related damage in the middle of the second wave of Covid but to provoke a fresh round of confrontation between the Centre and the state.

In the three weeks since the state Assembly election result became known, and Ms Banerjee led her party to a record victory, in the process trouncing the BJP which had hoped to form government, not a day has passed without the exchange of bitterness and acrimony between the Centre and the state and the BJP and the Trinamul Congress.

Regrettably, governor Jagdeep Dhankhar has taken it upon himself to be at the centre of these activities in ways that suggest he values his party association more than the neutrality his constitutional duties cast on him. He had been invited to the “review” meeting at the Kalaikunda air base, along with a clutch of BJP leaders, including the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.

This is far from usual. In the event, the CM did well not to have any part in any of this. That would have set a dreadful precedent. A meeting between the PM and a CM ought to be just that, the presence of senior aides apart; else it would always be a crowd commandeered by the Union government. The governor decidedly has no role to play in such a meeting. Nor do Opposition party leaders since this was not billed as an all-party meeting.

The CM, therefore, met the PM at the airbase, handed him an estimate of financial requirements to repair the damage caused by the cyclone, and with the PM’s “permission” proceeded to her next meeting along the damaged coastal belt. Nevertheless, through the BJP’s propaganda network, which alas includes sections of the impressionable media, it has been given out that the CM “skipped” the meeting called by the PM to review the damage.

Ms Banerjee is a very combative street politician and is known to give as good as she gets. This does not always make a pretty picture. However, events initiated by the Centre after her party’s recent electoral triumph suggest that her actions have been reactive, not pro-active. It is ironical that a PM who skipped talking about “federalism” after taking office and insisted on calling it “cooperative federalism” should be the presiding deity when ugly fracas plays out on daily basis in relation to a state in which his party has been firmly placed on the electoral mat.

Perhaps nothing shows this more graphically than the way the Centre chose to deal with the chief secretary, Alapan Bandyopadhyay. He was asked to report for duty at the Centre on the last day of his service as an IAS officer. Ironically, only four days before he was to superannuate, at the state’s request, the Centre had granted him an extension of three months in service (as against the six sought). This has been widely viewed as an act of infinitesimal smallness — a part of the act of continuing jousting against a state with whose CM the Centre is at odds.

Events initiated by

the Centre after her party’s recent electoral triumph

suggest that Ms Banerjee’s actions have been reactive, not

pro-active.