KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress (TMC) will approach President Ram Nath Kovind to demand the removal of Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar after his photograph appeared with Aurobindo Baidya, the security guard of Debanjan Deb, said Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, chief whip of Trinamool Legislature Party in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
Earlier, allegations were raised that Dhankhar's name had appeared in the diary of the hawala dealers in 1990. "We have never seen such a tainted Governor and he should be removed immediately," Roy said. TMC will raise the matter in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
Roy said it was really astonishing how the security guard of Deb could go so close to Dhankhar and his family members. "When the photograph was taken, they were all found to be smiling and it showed that they were in a fine mood," he said. Roy alleged that TMC had got the information that "gifts and envelopes had been sent to different persons by Deb. "We will give all the information to the SIT team which is probing the matter and no one (no matter how big he or she is) will be spared," Roy said.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while addressing a press conference on Wednesday, did not rule out BJP's conspiracy in the matter.
Referring to the silence of Dhankhar, Roy remarked: "We all wonder that the Governor who is eager to make statements to malign the state government is silent after Mohua Moitra tweeted about his involvement in getting a residential plot and which finally got rejected by the Punjab Haryana High Court. He is also silent on his involvement in the Jain hawala case."
Quoting from a book titled 'Bad money Bad politics' written by Sanjay Kapoor, Roy said: "The 33rd serial contained the name of Jagdeep Dhankhar who took Rs 5. 25 lakh. He is described as a Janata Dal MP." He said Dhankhar was a Deputy Minister in the ministry of VP Singh and Chandra Sekhar.
"We would like to know if Dhankhar and the Governor were one and the same person," he said. He further alleged that a Delhi-based newspaper had carried a piece of news on the death of Surendra Jain, the main man behind the Jain hawala case on June 28. "It has not been mentioned how Jain had died. Was it a natural death due to panic or an unnatural one? It is interesting to note the sequence, namely, the death of Jain and the silence of the Governor. Are the two related, we do not know," he wondered.