West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose on Thursday invited Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as his “honoured guest” to stage any protest she may wish to join inside the Raj Bhavan.
This “offer” comes days after Banerjee had threatened to stage a sit-in outside the Raj Bhavan to protest against his “holding back” bills passed by the state assembly.
“I will request my esteemed constitutional colleague, the honourable CM to come inside the Raj Bhavan and hold protests if she wants. Why should she be standing outside?” the governor said while speaking to reporters at the airport here.
During a Teacher’s Day programme on Tuesday, Banerjee said, “If federalism is interfered with by taking away rights (of the state governments), I will be forced to sit on dharna outside the Raj Bhavan. We will not allow injustice. Bengal knows how to fight back. Wait and watch.”
The governor, in his capacity as the chancellor of state-run universities, has recently appointed interim vice-chancellors for eight varsities, including the prestigious Presidency University, MAKAUT and the University of Burdwan, a step which was severely criticised by the chief minister as a bid to interfere with the running of state-administered universities.
Moreover, Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose on Thursday asserted that he will continue his fight to make state universities free of corruption and violence. His comments come at a time when the state government and the Raj Bhavan are embroiled in a war of words over the appointments of interim vice-chancellors of some state universities by the governor who is also Chancellor of all state universities. Speaking about the Raj Bhavan’s recent move to appoint interim VCs, Bose in a video message said, “I have appointed them as the apex court ruled against some of the appointments earlier made by the state government.”
Alleging interim VCs appointed by him were being harassed, he said “five (interim) VCs had to resign. Why? They told me they were being threatened by goons, senior IAS officers were pressuring them. This is what the (interim) VCs told me in confidence. That is why five of them resigned. I did not ask them to resign. They resigned out of fear.”
“There were allegations of corruption, sexual harassment and political interference against some VCs who were earlier appointed,” he claimed.