Modi, Mamata on a dangerous action-reaction spiral

The charge against Mamata is that she kept Modi waiting, but she has denied it

The stand-off over the just-retired IAS officer Alapan Bandyopadhyay, who was chief secretary of West Bengal and is now adviser to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, is only the latest incident in the continuing saga of confrontation between the state and the central government.

The confrontation existed before the West Bengal elections and became more acute after the Trinamool Congress (TMC) decisively defeated the BJP. In the latest case, the chief secretary was recalled to the Centre on the last day of his service in violation of service rules which stipulate that the state’s concurrence is needed for such a measure.

Four days before the recall, the chief secretary’s tenure had been extended to enable him to continue his work of managing the pandemic in the state. He has now been issued a show-cause notice. It is clear that the Centre’s action against the chief secretary is part of the political fight between the BJP and the TMC.

The chief secretary episode needs to be seen in the context of the story about the alleged disrespect to the Prime Minister shown by Mamata Banerjee during Narendra Modi’s visit to the state for a review meeting after Cyclone Yaas struck last week.

Also read: Alapan Bandyopadhyay chapter is over, says Mamata

The charge against her is that she kept Modi waiting, but she has denied it. She has the grouse that Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari, who had no reason and need to attend the meeting, were invited to it and that was to spite her.

There seems to have been a lack of communication between the Centre and the state government over this. But it is most likely that it was deliberate. The Governor has been running an open political campaign against the TMC government, and Adhikari is a recent defector to the BJP.

Politics is at the root of the acrimony between the two governments, and it gets aggravated through a chain of actions and reactions. The Centre is to be blamed for creating rancour through provocations, and Mamata tends to give back more than she gets.

The central government and the BJP have not been able to accept the humiliating defeat in the state assembly elections. It will be unfortunate if the Centre wants to keep the relations on the boil for political gains in future.

It will affect the governance of the state, especially when the Centre and the state need to work together to fight the pandemic and manage the cyclone relief operations. It will hurt federal relations in general and affect the administration by dragging the bureaucracy into the political fight. It will politicise and demoralise the bureaucracy.