Spats with Didi kept Dhankhar in limelight

Tribune News Service

Shubhadeep Choudhury

New Delhi August 6

Vice President-elect Jagdeep Dhankhar, who is 71 years of age, owes his fame to the three-year stint he had as the Governor of West Bengal. His frequent showdowns with the mercurial Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee were widely covered in the media.

After being sworn in as the Governor on July 30, 2019, the first unorthodox action by Dhankhar was on September 21 when he went to Jadavpur University (JU) to personally rescue Babul Supriyo (now a TMC minister, who then was an MoS in the Modi government) from a blockade mounted by the Left-wing students of the institution.

Sensing trouble, JU Vice-Chancellor got himself admitted to a clinic citing heart issues and Mamata refused to send police to the university in the absence of a request from the VC. Dhankhar, JU Chancellor, went to the spot after he was alerted by his predecessor KN Tripathi.

Dhankhar picked up Supriyo in his limousine and managed to leave the campus after some intrepid manoeuvres with the car by the driver. When Mamata refused to give him helicopter for going to Malda to attend a college function, Dhankhar, accompanied by his wife Sudesh, travelled the distance by road. The elderly couple returned to Kolkata in the night, covering some 600 km in the span of a day in the process.

Later, Home Minister Amit Shah made arrangements for him to travel by a helicopter belonging to paramilitary forces. This gave the Governor the wings. When hundreds of BJP supporters of West Bengal took shelter in neighbouring Assam fearing post-poll violence against them by Trinamool Congress (TMC) goons, Dhankhar went to meet them, much to the consternation of CM Mamata.

Twitter turned into an effective tool for Dhankhar in his mission against Mamata. Initially, Dhankhar’s aides used to forward the link of his tweets to mediapersons. Besides comments, he used to upload his acrimonious correspondence with the CM.

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