KOLKATA: Days after West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar said there is a ‘light of hope’at the end of a ‘dark tunnel’ after Prime Minister’s aerial survey of Amphan ravaged areas on May 22, the sign of thaw in the frosty relationship between him and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee evaporated after the Governor on Monday said that Bengal’s highest number of COVID-19 cases in past 24 hours was a ‘fall out of fudging’ of data.
On his Twitter handle Dhankhar said, real time data is the essence of awareness of people who need to be more careful in the days after lockdown. He also expressed his concern over the issue of pending reports of 40,000 COVID-19 tests.
“Seek enlightenment @derekobrienmp as to how many results of test reports are pending as he is social media spokesperson. I put this figure over 40,000 to Chief Secretary. Awfully worrisome scenario. Such long delay in test results defeats the purpose of testing. Only yesterday State touched 371 the highest COVID +ve number. All this staggering is secondary fudging of data. This does good to none. Hoodwinking never pays in crisis,’’ Dhankhar tweeted.
Dhankhar, while interacting with the TNIE last week, said, “There is a light of hope at the end of a dark tunnel after the PM’s visit. The CM was also there for an aerial survey. Working together and cooperative federalism is being seen at the moment.’’
The governor’s tweet on Monday appeared to be the beginning of another round of war of words between Bengal’s two constitutional functionaries.
Earlier, he had raised questions on the COVID-19 toll after the state health department formed a committee which held comorbidity of several deceased as the reason behind their death.
He was also vocal when the members of Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCTs), who visited Bengal to assess whether lockdown norms were being followed in the state, alleged non-cooperation by the state government and accused the health department of not providing logistics.