On August 29, Gandhi first wrote to Mamata, urging that the deadlock over the Tata car project be resolved through talks, with a copy of the letter to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. While Mamata reacted positively the next day, Bhattacharjee kept silent.

The Governor then called up the Chief Minister, offering to mediate the talks with Mamata himself.

This broke the ice between the two a year after Nandigram. At the time, the CPI(M) had openly dubbed the Governor’s role as politically motivated and accused him of helping the Trinamool Congress. Hardly a day went by without a leader of the party attacking him. At the end of March 2008, at the CPI(M) Coimbatore party congress, Chief Minister Bhattcharjee had even initiated a resolution demanding the abolition of the Governor’s post. Since then, the CPI(M) in West Bengal had looked upon Gandhi as its political enemy.

However, in the Left Front too, it was basically the CPI(M) that continued to have a problem with Gandhi.

From load shedding to waterlogging, the Governor’s sharp reactions kept ruffling the Chief Minister’s feathers. He didn’t earn many friends with his self-imposed power cuts in Raj Bhavan during peak summer to highlight the electricity crisis, leaving the state Government with egg on its face, or when he summoned the Mayor seeking clarification and asking him about future projects to check waterlogging during the monsoon.

When the Governor called both the parties to the table on the Singur issue, he reportedly had apprehensions about the constitutional viability of his role as a mediator, as he is the constitutional head of the Government and should ideally be taking its side on an issue. “The Governor cannot be a mediator between the Government and the Opposition because he is also a part of the Government,” a senior officer in the CM’s secretariat said. At this juncture, Gandhi himself devised a way, only chairing the meeting.

... contd.