Amidst the raging spat Amidst the spat between the Governor and the state government, the state government today raked up the question on the “relevance” of the post of Governor in the Constitution. Addressing the Assembly on the concluding day of the special session organised to mark the 70th Constitution Day, Partha Chatterjee, state parliamentary affairs minister while stressing on the need to uphold the sanctity of the Constitution, questioning why the Governor’s position should be enshrined in the constitution.

He also said the issue of alleged “Governor’s dominance” over an elected government related to the issue of Centre-state relations and wanted it to be debated in the Assembly. “The time has now come to seriously ponder over things. The post of a Governor, which is a nominated one, should be put under scrutiny and a debate should be initiated in the Assembly whether the gubernatorial post is relevant enough to be enshrined in the Constitution at all in the present context.

The Governor, who is nominated, is behaving like a Lat Saheb and trying to prevail over an elected government. We are debating on Centre-State relations in the Assembly and even the judiciary did discuss the thorny issue. What prevents us from discuss the rationale and relevance of a Governor’s post being part of the constitution with regard to the current scenario. A debate which is the need of the hour should be initiated to discuss the issue”, Mr Chatterjee said. Taking a leaf out of the chief minister’s book, who has said that the Governor was misusing his power in the state, after Mr Dhankhar flayed the state government for undermining the post of Governor, Mrs Chandrima Bhattacharya, minister of state for health, today upped the ante further and put the blame squarely on the Governor for such an uncalledfor situation.

“The Governor himself is responsible for such a situation. The chief minister is well aware of how to behave with dignitaries. But the Governor did not show any desire of exchanging any pleasantries or sharing any greeting with the chief minister,” the minister said. She also alleged that the Governor was playing a “partisan” role while discharging his duty as the constitutional head of the state.

“He spoke highly about the Prime Minister for initiating the move of abrogating Article 370 and for restoring peace in Jammu and Kashmir but nudged the state government as the position of the constitutional head was being compromised. He had praised the Prime Minister for the One Nation narrative and said the nation comes first. The minister retorted,” We are all aware of the fact that nation comes first and we do not need any lecture on the subject from anyone. The party at the Centre is trying to introduce a cItizenship amendment Bill to curb the citizenship of the minorities.’’

Oppn stages walkout:

The Opposition in the state Assembly today staged a walkout after the Speaker turned down the plea of Abdul Mannan, who is the leader of Opposition, to speak on the alleged refusal by the Speaker to give more than eight minutes time to speak in the House yesterday. “We had a discussion the day before yesterday at my chamber where we spoke about the time to be allotted and Mannan was proposed eight minutes time which he agreed to and then he was seen saying otherwise while interacting with the media,” the Speaker said.

The issue later, triggered trading of barbs between the minister Chandrima Bhattacharya and Mr Mannan who sought to issue a riposte to Mrs Bhattacharya but was declined by the Speaker. This led the entire Opposition to stage a walkout. Later, while talking to the media, the leader of the Opposition said, “As the leader of the Opposition, whose rank is equal to the minister of state, I feel slighted at not being allotted more than eight minutes.”