It won’t be a Red carpet welcome for Narayanan in West Bengal

NEW DELHI: When M K Narayanan takes the salute at Kolkata’s Red Road, there may be several downcast faces at Alimuddin Street.

CPM is peeved over the appointment of Mr Narayanan, a former police officer with intelligence background, as West Bengal governor. Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee conveyed his party’s unease over the decision to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he went to Kolkata to visit the late Jyoti Basu while he was in hospital last week.

Not only is CPM unhappy that the West Bengal governor will be a former IPS officer but also views him as being pro-Congress. With assembly elections in the state due in 2011, CPM suspects there may be a “surreptitious game plan” behind the move.

“The governor’s role becomes very important during election time,” a party leader said. Though CPM has not formally reacted to Mr Narayanan’s appointment, party leaders have expressed their disappointment with the move.

Mr Narayanan’s appointment as West Bengal governor seems to have brought back memories of the tenure of Mr Dharma Vira, also a bureaucrat, around four decades ago. Relations between the governor and the then Left and Democratic Front government in the state were highly volatile. With Mr Dharma Vira’s term leaving behind a bitter taste, the CPM is averse to a bureaucrat being appointed governor.

“Bureaucrats have a tendency to interfere in the state government’s functioning,” a party leader said. He also alleged that Mr Dharma Vira was working at the behest of the then Congress government at the Centre. This is what the party fears could happen with Mr Narayanan at the Raj Bhavan.

With arch rival Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee demanding President’s rule in the state and Maoist violence continuing in the state, a governor seen by CPM as being close to the Congress, is a cause for concern for the party.

The Left Front, which is going through one of its worst political phases, was hoping that the Centre will consult it before it takes a decision on appointing a governor.

CPM’s relations with the previous governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi were also acrimonious. The party had dubbed him as being “partisan”. Mr Gandhi had said in 2007 that Nandigram had been “recaptured” by CPM and wrote about his “cold horror”. However, just before his term ended last month, party patriarch Jyoti Basu is understood to have told him he had been “quite happy” with him when the governor met him at his Salt Lake residence.