After a Twitter war and trading of barbs between the Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and the state government, particularly relating to the state of education in Bengal, the state education minister, Mr Partha Chatterjee, today called on the constitutional head of the state at Raj Bhavan. The two met for half an hour, but no details of what was discussed were immediately available.
However, a source close to the Governor’s office said they are believed to have discussed issues pertaining to the condition of education in Bengal and the issues relating to the spate of spats that had brought the relationship between the state government and the constitutional head of the state to a new low.
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Mr Chatterjee, the education minister, did not take any questions from the waiting newspersons after coming out of the meeting and the Governor only expressed happiness over the meeting, which he said went on in a cordial atmosphere on Twitter. “Had extremely involved pleasant and cordial meeting with Dr Partho Chatterjee, Honourable Education Minister. Best wishes for 2020 to Honourable Chief Minister and all the members,” the Governor tweeted after the meeting.
A source close to the state education minister said that they had discussed in details about the progress the state education had witnessed in recent years and the new rules that the state government had passed in the Assembly clipping the powers of the Chancellor of the state universities and empowering of the state education department instead to vet all issues pertaining to education and the issues concerning the Vice-Chancellor as well.
A highly placed source in the Governor’s office neither confirmed nor denied when his reaction was sought as to whether the ticklish issue of the clipping of the Chancellor’s powers actually came up in the discussions. Meanwhile, Mr Dhankhar while wishing the people of Bengal a happy new year, subtly took a dig at the state government for the cycle of violence that has erupted in recent times and hoped that the new year would bring peace and tranquility in the state and wished togetherness for the sake of Bengal’s progress.
On the other hand, another of the Governor’s tweets regarding Lord Carzon signing the first Partition of Bengal in 1905 had raised opposition’s hackles as the Congress and the Left both slammed the Governor over his comments. Condemning his comments, Sujan Chakraborty of the CPI-M and Abdul Mannan of the Congress flayed the Governor saying that his comments on partition were uncalled for and unsavoury. Such comments at this juncture have hurt the sentiments of the people of Bengal.”
Mr Dhankhar, earlier in the day, tweeted his pictures while recording and signing a new year’s message to the people of the state. In the tweet, he said he was recording the message in the Raj Bhavan library, while sitting on the “table from which Lord Curzon signed the first Partition of Bengal in 1905”. After the tweet evoked a storm of protest for glorifying the Partition of Bengal, the Governor later took down the tweet.
