Kolkata: West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar had to cut short his inaugural budget session speech on Friday after BJP legislators launched a protest against the post-poll violence and deteriorating law and order situation in the state.
There is speculation that Dhankhar had to cut short his speech as there was no mention of the post-poll violence in the address copy prepared by the state government.
Dhankhar had recently expressed his objection to the speech (of Friday’s budget session) prepared by the West Bengal government when he found some important points missing from the 14-page note. He said that he wants to discuss those missing points with Mamata Banerjee.
On June 28, Banerjee spoke with the governor over the phone, during which he clearly mentioned the issues he faced, along with some of the points mentioned in the speech’s copy. On the same day, Banerjee addressed a press conference and accused Dhankhar of being involved in the Jain hawala case and termed him as a ‘corrupt’ person.
“He is a mature leader and statesman, and his remarks like this against me are extremely unfortunate. Ten minutes before the press conference (by Mamata Banerjee), she called me about my concern on some of the points mentioned in my address copy. Immediately after my objection on some points, he held a press conference and accused me of being a corrupt person,” the governor had said on June 28.
BJP MLA and Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, said Dhankhar may have left the assembly without reading the entire speech as he had objected to some missing points in the speech’s copy, which he needed to highlight.
“There was no mention of the post-poll violence in the Governor’s speech after the counting of votes on May 2. Surprisingly, it was mentioned in the draft that there was no post-poll violence in Bengal. We felt it is possible that the governor was unhappy with the content of the speech prepared by Banerjee and hence cut short his speech and left the assembly,” the official said.
“We are grateful to the ruling government and the governor for highlighting the law and order issues in the state through social media. He is a humble person and he will be able to explain why he shortened his speech,” he said.
This is not the first time Dhankhar has expressed dissatisfaction over the content of the speech. On February 7 last year, he had expressed dismay over the state government allegedly not allowing the post-Budget speech for live telecast.
Then, there were apprehensions that he might change the budget speech (ratified by the state government). It was alleged that to avoid public embarrassment, his speech was barred from being telecast live.
However, (then) Dhankhar read out the speech prepared by the state government without making any changes.
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