Jagdeep Dhankhar has disagreed with the government of Bengal on a range of issues
Siliguri:
West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar said on Friday that political violence stigmatized the state and called on police and bureaucrats to work as “officials and not as political officials.”
He argued that his recent Twitter post saying that more than one rape or kidnapping took place in West Bengal every hour in August was based on official data, although the Home Office, which reports to the minister Chief Mamata Banerjee, called it “baseless”.
“West Bengal is the cultural epicenter of the world. Political violence stigmatizes the state,” Dhankhar said at a press conference here in North Bengal.
His statement came days after Manish Shukla, a BJP leader in Titagarh in the North 24 Parganas district, was shot dead, with the Saffron party claiming the TMC was behind. The ruling party denied the accusation.
“We have an incomparable heritage. Why should our faces be blackened by this kind of political violence, political vendetta, targeted killings without space for the opposition? This is not democracy,” he said. said.
The governor, who disagreed with the state government on a range of issues, said he thought so if he said the state would have free and fair polls.
Assembly elections in West Bengal are scheduled to take place in April or May of next year.
On October 6, Raj Bhavan and the Congressional government of Trinamool had crossed swords over rape and kidnapping statistics, with the Interior Ministry questioning the authenticity of the figures cited by Mr. Dhankhar.
After the department tweeted that “the allegations are baseless, ill-founded and erroneous,” the governor asked the chief secretary and the additional chief secretary in charge of the Home Office to withdraw it.
“All bureaucrats, in the administration and the police, should never forget that they must be politically neutral. They are civil servants, they are not political officials,” Dhankhar said at the press conference. .
Describing the situation as grim and alarming, he said: “The long arm of the law will catch up with them. We cannot have a politicized bureaucracy and police.”
