Kolkata: West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Monday described chief minister Mamata Banerjee as “usurper of power,” returning her latest salvo to her.

“You have hogged media focus by your assertion... I beseech you to desist from intensifying your efforts to usurp powers.” Earlier your refrain was ‘governor is running parallel government’. The bitter truth is that people in the state know only too well ‘who in the state is usurper and extra-constitutional fountain of power!’ Who runs government and syndicates! Who is this ABCD! An open secret! Surely I am not the one,” he wrote to the Trinamul Congress supremo.

Dhankhar argued, “Your misplaced stand, that as elected chief minister with majority in legislature you are impregnably unaccountable and as governor, I have no role, is lamentable. This smacks of authoritarianism that has no place in democracy where all are accountable. You have only to look to recent history and around, how your peers, with majority, faced flak of law. They were mistaken and so are you. I had indicated to you that none is above law. Law catches with all.”

He also observed, “The state unfortunately is emerging as a ‘police state’ with anyone posting on social media, to the distaste of the ruling dispensation, gets a police knock and thereafter!! Expression of political opinions is sought to be controlled by the government. Political victimisation is on incremental trajectory.”

On the Covid-19 deaths, the governor alleged, “Reports of disposal of Covid-19 dead bodies from several areas with heartless indescribable insensitivity is unconscionably shocking. People are traumatised at this callous stance. Their sentiments are outraged. We would never be able to come out of the sordid saga and shame of ‘Dhapa’! It will haunt us for long.”

Calling for effective protective gear for the health workers, he noted, “There are operational issues of politicised PDS, leading to unrest/violent agitations at several places. State is passing through one of the most horrific times.”