The feud between Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and chief minister Mamata Banerjee today worsened with the latter sending a five-paged letter reminding that he was a “nominated functionary”and had “humiliated” the elected representative with his unparliamentary attacks while the former dismissing it as factually incorrect.

In a series of tweets Mr Dhankhar have been critical of state government’s handling of Coronavirus crisis. Miss Banerjee today said that the Governor also sent her an objectionable text message that had transgressed “constitutional dharma and even basic norms of decency”. She termed the letter as “unprecedented in tone, tenor and language”.

“You have to judge for yourself whether your direct attacks on me, my ministers and officers, your tone tenor and language, which in the mildest words of extreme moderation, deserve to be characterised as unparliamentary. You are holding of press conferences against the state government. Your repeated and consistent interference in the administration of my ministries and departments…make it clear as to who has flagrantly transgressed constitutional dharma and even basic norms of decency between constitutional functionaries” the five-paged strong letter read. Miss Banerjee wrote: “You appear to have forgotten that I am an elected Chief Minister of a proud Indian state. You also seem to have forgotten that you are a nominated Governor”.

Yesterday, Miss Banerjee refused to comment on Mr Dhankar’s tweets on deployment of central teams and state government’s handling of Coronavirus crisis. Quoting BR Ambedkar and Sarkaria Commission in her letter, Miss Banerjee wrote that as “governor so selected may well seek to override the powers of his Chief Minister leading to friction between them and distortion of the system of responsible government.

Such a Governor can hardly be expected to function as a constitutional head of the State. This was the reason why Constitution-framers gave up the proposal to have an elected governor”. Attaching the letter sent from Raj Bhavan on 20 April, Miss Banerjee wrote: “your expostulation leaves me with no option but to release these letters in public domain to leave it to people of the state and of this nation to judge as to who has done what and who is in breach of elementary norms of constitutional behaviour”. Immediately after this, Mr Dhankhar took to Twitter dismissing it as “Outrageously factually wrong and constitutionally infirm…..People of the state need to know the real picture,” Mr Dhankar tweeted.