New Delhi: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal has accused governor Jagdeep Dhankhar of spreading ‘fake news’. Senior members of the party and members of parliament took to Twitter and made statements against the governor.
Earlier, governor Dhankar had expressed concern over videos which showed decomposed dead bodies being dragged into a Kolkata Municipal Corporation van. “Such uncivilised and uncouth approach in disposal of dead bodies @MamataOfficial came for severe condemnation all over. Our age old traditions were mercilessly decimated by repeated dragging of dead bodies by iron hook. Urge immediate apology to society at large,” Dhankar had tweeted.
The Kolkata police and local administration had called the videos ‘fake’ and said that the bodies in the videos were those which had not been claimed by anyone at the morgue of a state-run hospital.
The state home department has said that the governor with his statement and the videos are attempts to “decontextualise the incident” in an effort to project them as part of the pandemic when they aren’t.
The West Bengal home department said that the “misinformation drive” to project an isolated incident of a “particular agency’s handling of some unidentified and decomposed dead bodies lying (post accidents etc) in a morgue” has no relationship whatsoever with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This has been communicated in writing and in person by most senior state officials even to Hon’ble Governor. Decontexualising the incident and projecting an one off incident on the pandemic canvas, despite explanatory communiques, adversely impacts the social mind, demotivates public administration, denigrates frontline public health workers, hamstrings further streamlining of all relevant procedure especially at a time when the entire state is fighting the twin blows of Covid and Amphan. GOWB condemns untruths,” the department said in a statement.
“The WB government. is constantly working for the people of Bengal and all we expect from the honourable Governor is to help us by not spreading Fake News and misinformation,” state education minister Partha Chatterjee said.
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Former railway minister Dinesh Trivedi said that the governor has compromised the integrity of the office he holds. “The only thing that has been compromised is the integrity of the office of the Governor. You have stayed consistently silent on the achievements of the state while looking for every little opportunity to malign it’s image,” Trivedi wrote on Twitter.
Dhankar responded to the TMC’s attack by saying on Twitter, “Instead of apologising for shaming the state, senior TMC leaders are busy attacking the governor for pointing out the truth.”
“Knives that were being sharpened… MPs and Senior Leaders have taken to tweeting similarly rather than apologise for shaming our State by such barbaric acts of dragging human bodies callously by pair of tongs,” he said.