‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’: Amit Mitra’s piercing response to Bengal guv Dhankhar
West Bengal’s soft-spoken former finance minister Amit Mitra delivered a harsh comeback to governor Jagdeep Dhankhar who appeared to question the utility of the state’s business summits
KOLKATA: A day after demanding a white paper from Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on investments made in the state after five successive global business summits held by the administration, governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Wednesday found the state’s former finance minister Amit Mitra calling out the governor in his unusually bitter response on social media.

Responding to Dhakhar’s tweet, in which the state’s top constitutional authority contended that he hadn’t received any answer from the Bengal government even a year after seeking details on the outcome of the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS), Mitra posted on Twitter a copy of the response that he sent last year to Raj Bhavan and wondered why he was speaking in two voices.
Mitra, whose tenure as finance minister ended on Tuesday as he did not contest the assembly polls owing to health reasons, drew a parallel between the Governor’s tweets and the dual personalities of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous 1886 novel.
“Hon Governor’s tweet on Business Summits is a classic case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. On 9th Nov he strongly supported CM’s plan of next Summit. “I will leave nothing undone..” & ”togetherness” and within 24 hours he tweets venom on summits, by putting out a year-old letter to CM & FM,(me)!” tweeted Mitra. Mitra was appointed as principal chief adviser to the chief minister and finance department in the rank of cabinet minister on Tuesday.
Mitra continued.
“Governor said on 9th of Nov at Meet & Greet event as reported, “We have to ensure there is no room for conflict..no room for adversarial situation.. only one way, togetherness.” Very next day, he tweeted the OPPOSITE of these utterances, in a mode of all out conflict ? Shocking !!!” Mitra wrote in his second tweet.
The November 9 event Mitra referred to was held at New Town on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata. It was attended by the governor, several foreign diplomats and captains of the industry. The chief minister announced at the event that the next BGBS will be held in March next year. The 2020 summit was not held because of the Covid pandemic.
“It is shocking that he seeks response when I had officially responded with a 4 page letter on summits, giving data on investment offers under implementation, employment generation etc,(read letter below). Is he suffering from AMNESIA & needs HELP or is it a Machiavellian omission ?” Mitra said in his third tweet.
He also put out the four-page letter on the outcome of the business summits that he wrote to the governor on September 24 last year.
In his response to Dhankhar’s letter sent a month earlier on August 25, 2020, Mitra’s letter mentioned that the cumulative investment proposals received at BGBS between 2015 and 2019 amounted to ₹12,32, 603 crore and around half of this amount was in “investment mode.”
“You would be happy to know that between BGBS 2015 and BGBS 2018, 50.27% of the investment proposals went into implementation mode. For BGBBS 2019, already ₹71,646 crore is under implementation. The employment generated through these investments is to the tune of 28,00,000 already,” the letter said.
Mitra also said because of the success of the summit, the “state’s GDP climbed from ₹4.6 lakh crore in 2019-11 (the year before we came to office) to ₹12.5 lakh crore in 2019-20.”
Dhankhar, who was in Delhi to attend a three-day national conference of governors, reacted to Mitra’s comments on Twitter.
“Never expected such “low” from Dr Mitra. Blissfully he takes to a tangential evasive route. Where is response to the five issues flagged by me. A probe would reveal all skeletons so far well stacked,” he tweeted late on Wednesday.