The mystery of the Bengal governor’s midnight letter to chief minister Mamata Banerjee has now been consigned to “history”, the letter writer has said.
C.V. Ananda Bose told reporters at Raj Bhavan on Friday morning: “What is written by the chancellor to his esteemed constitutional colleague should remain confidential between them. If either party wants to speak about it at an appropriate time, they will speak about it.”
When the reporters asked him whether his communication could be called a mystery letter, Bose said: “It is not a mystery, now the letter has been sent to history.”
Close to midnight on September 9, the governor sent a sealed confidential letter to the chief minister following a threat to wait for midnight earlier in the day. That was a time when the governor and the government were locked in a tussle over control of state universities over the appointment of officiating vice-chancellors.
The Supreme Court has since stepped in on the issue and said it would form a search-and-selection committee for appointing full-term VCs with members named by the state government, the governor and the UGC. The court has asked for three to five names each from the three.
On Friday, Bose said he had “identified the members of the search committee to be nominated before the honourable Supreme Court as per their order”.
Until the apex court issued the order, the governor, who is also chancellor of state-aided universities, had been handpicking people to officiate as VCs, bypassing the state government.
There is no clarity yet on whether the state education department has decided on the names to be submitted to the Supreme Court. Calls and text messages from this newspaper to education minister Bratya Basu failed to elicit a response.
On September 15, the minister had said they would soon announce the names.
The court wants the names by September 25.
An official in the education department said it seemed from the governor’s reaction on Friday that he did not want the controversy over the letter to continue.
Bose struck a conciliatory note on September 11, when he said: “Whatever has been sent to the state, this is not the time to discuss this because my honourable constitutional colleague, the chief minister, is going abroad. I do not want any tension to be given to her.”
The chief minister will return to Bengal on Saturday from her foreign tour.
On August 21, a division bench of the Supreme Court had issued notices on the education department’s appeal challenging the appointment of officiating VCs by Bose, allegedly without consulting the state government.
A state education department official said: “The Bengal government had passed a bill in the Assembly in mid-July on the constitution of five-member search committees, which will have a nominee of the chief minister, for the appointment of permanent VCs. But the state government’s counsel last week submitted that the top court should constitute a committee to put an end to the controversy over the appointment of VCs. The department is considering all aspects before finalising its decision.”