Raj Bhavan vs state secretariat: Trinamool fielding students' wing with 5-day agitation programme

Kolkata, Sep 11 (IANS) Amid rising tension between the Raj Bhavan and state secretariat over the appointment of interim vice- chancellors of state universities, the ruling Trinamool Congress has decided to field its students’ wing in a full-fledged agitation programme against Governor C.V. Ananda Bose starting from Monday.

Accordingly Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad, will be organising protest demonstrations in as many as 23 state universities in phases that will start from Monday and will continue till Friday.

The students’ wing leadership of the ruling party has claimed that the manner in which the Governor is running a parallel administration in the education sector bypassing the state government or the state education department on each and every issue is extremely harmful for the economic ambience of the state. Hence it needs to be protested at a massive scale throughout the state.

The protests at the state universities will happen amid the continuing mystery over the midnight confidential letters that the Governor forwarded to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Union government. However, Raj Bhavan has not made it clear as yet on which department of the Union government he had forwarded his letter.

Till Monday morning both the state secretariat and the Raj Bhavan had maintained silence over the contents of the midnight confidential letters. State government sources said that there is a faint possibility of the chief minister briefing the media on the matter sometime on Monday.

The Governor has recently given his logic behind appointing interim vice-chancellors. He said that he was forced to make those appointments since a number of state universities were functioning without a functional head after the previous vice-chancellors had to step down following an order of the Supreme Court as their appointments were done flouting the University Grants Commission (UGC) norms.