A new political controversy has started between the BJP and TMC in Bengal.
TMC chief and CM Mamata Banerjee appealed to the Centre to withdraw its order attaching state chief secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay to the Union government while preparing the groundwork for what could be a long-drawn political battle in her third term.
“For the sake of Bengal, I am ready to touch the feet of the Prime Minister, if that makes him happy. But this is political vendetta. Don’t defame me, don’t humiliate me,” Mamata said at a news conference at the state administrative headquarters, adding the “unconstitutional and illegal step” had shocked her and the IAS lobby.
The order, sent on Friday night after Mamata and Bandyopadhyay had skipped a review meeting called by Narendra Modi, informed the state government about the Union cabinet’s appointments committee’s nod to “placement of services” of Bandyopadhyay, a 1987 batch IAS officer, to the government of India.
Chief secretary Bandyopadhyay has been asked to appear at North Block in New Delhi on Monday, May 31, the day he was due to retire, though he was granted a three-month extension following a request from the state government.
PM Modi visited cyclone-affected Odisha and Bengal on Friday and had scheduled meetings with the respective chief ministers. Mamata met Modi to hand over a report on the damage caused by the cyclone Yaas and left soon after for Digha without attending the review meeting.
Bandyopadhyay accompanied her. Mamatas decision to skip the meet has led to a political storm and the state chief secretary finds himself caught in it, that too at the fag end of his bureaucratic career.
