Kolkata, May 7 : When Gopal Krishna Gandhi was made the Governor of West Bengal on December 14, 2004, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhatta- charjee welcomed him saying, “We wanted Gandhi as the Governor of our state and we got him.” Less than four years later, at the CPI(M) party congress held in Coimbatore in March this year, Bhattacharjee moved a resolution demanding that the appointment of Governors should be left to the discretion of the chief ministers.

Over the last year, the West Bengal Governor and the state government have not been on the best of terms. The CPM’s initial euphoria over Gandhi has been running out fast. At critical moments and also through simple gestures, the Governor has made it more than evident that he is a man of independent thinking and would not hesitate to follow his conscience.

The more the Governor asserted himself, the more the distance between the government and the Governor widened. This discomfort was evident during the Nandigram violence. The police firing of March 14, 2007, that killed 14 farmers in Nandigram proved to be the flashpoint in what was a souring relationship. The Governor issued a statement, saying the violence had sent a “cold horror” down his spine. It was the Governor’s statement that was the basis on which the Calcutta High Court issued a suo moto order for a CBI inquiry into the police firing.

But Gandhi carved a distinctive identity much before Nandigram and proved himself to be a ‘people’s governor’. He has taken care to revive institutions and centres of excellence. He has been instrumental in initiating the “cleansing” of the Indian Museum that was seen as steeped in corruption. He renovated the Raj Bhavan library, throwing it open for public use, and appointed an expert committee to look into the ills afflicting the Viswa Bharati University in Santiniketan and to find ways out.

While his critics dismissed these acts as publicity stunts, his supporters said these were prompted by a strong sense of righteousness. Soon after he joined his post in December, 2004, he issued instructions that in no circumstances would he be addressed as ‘Your Excellency’ or ‘Your Highness’.

Once, he got out of Raj Bhavan incognito, asking his driver to leave him alone at a metro station. After a metro ride and a walk down some roads, he hopped on to a tram trundling down a Kolkata street and got back to Raj Bhavan after several hours—no security cover and no guide. During the monsoons, he once waded through waist-deep water.

The ruling Left frowned but Gandhi was unstoppable. In November last year, Nandigram returned to haunt the relationship. After the CPI(M)’s ‘recapture’ of Nandigram on November 10 last year, Gandhi issued a statement saying the “recapture was forcible and illegal”. CPI(M) state committee secretary Biman Bose raised a counter-question: “If the ‘recapture’ was illegal, was the capture legal?”

After the Governor visited Nandigram in December last year, a CPI(M) central committee member suggested that the Governor should come out of Raj Bhavan and join the Trinamool Congress.

Gandhi was unmoved. Instead, when West Bengal assembly Speaker Hasim Abdul Halim criticised his functioning, reminding him of his constitutional limits, the Governor responded with a touch of Gandhigiri. The next day, he sent him a bouquet and a letter, the contents of which were not disclosed. But the Governor, who once worked as secretary to former President K.R. Narayanan, told people close to him: “I have learnt my job from K.R. Narayanan. Let nobody remind me of my constitutional duties.”