Chhattisgarh Governor Balramji Dass Tandon has deliberately stayed away from a function, in which Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh was the Chief Guest, reflecting that the constitutional head is not happy with the functioning of the BJP government in the state.
Perhaps this was the first such occasion in Chhattisgarh where a governor stays away from a function of his own government, where he was supposed to preside over and for which invitation card had also been distributed.
Governor Tandon is the Chancellor of the biggest and oldest university of Chhattisgarh, Pundit Ravi Shankar Shukla University at Raipur and he preferred to stay away from its convocation ceremony, which was attended by Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh, Higher Education Minister Prem Prakash Pandey and Agriculture Minister Brij Mohan Agrawal among others.
The absence of the Governor has become a talk of the town and even a point of discussion among the top bureaucrats, although Chief Minister Singh refused to comment on the matter.
The matter has also assumed significance as Tandon is a founder member of the Jan Sangh and BJP, which has been ruling the state for the last over 12 years. He was an MLA from Amritsar (Punjab) in year 1957, 1962, 1967, 1969 and 1977. In 1997 he was elected from Rajpura segment. Tandon, who was arrested during Emergency, had been a Cabinet Minister and also served as the Leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly.