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Bengal governor CV Ananda Bose resigns after less than 4 years in office, Mamata drops successor hint
Confirming his resignation, CV Ananda Bose told the news agency PTI that he has “spent enough time at the Governor's office”.
West Bengal governor C. V. Ananda Bose resigned on Thursday evening, triggering a political row in poll-bound state over his abrupt decision after three-and-a-half years in office.
The development gained further traction amid reports that R. N. Ravi — whose differences with the M. K. Stalin-led government have frequently made headlines — may be sent to Bengal as an interim replacement.
Bose, a former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer appointed Bengal governor in November 2022, told news agency PTI that he had spent enough time in the post but did not disclose the reasons.
“Yes, I have resigned. I have been the governor of Bengal for three-and-a-half years; it’s enough for me,” Bose told PTI.
Like his predecessor Jagdeep Dhankhar, Bose’s tenure, too, was marked by an acrimonious relationship between the Trinamool Congress and the Raj Bhavan. Yet, he had enrolled himself as a local voter, prompting many to conclude on Thursday that his decision was sudden.
Expressing “shock,” chief minister Mamata Banerjee wrote on X that Union home minister Amit Shah had informed her about the development.
She said Bose could have been under pressure from Shah “to serve certain political interests.”
“I am shocked and deeply concerned by the sudden news of the resignation of Shri C. V. Ananda Bose, the governor of West Bengal,” Banerjee wrote on X minutes after the news became public.
“The reasons behind his resignation are not known to me at this moment. However, given the prevailing circumstances, I would not be surprised if the Governor has been subjected to some pressure from the Union Home Minister to serve certain political interests on the eve of the forthcoming state Assembly elections,” Banerjee wrote.
Banerjee said Shah told her that Ravi, a former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer with experience in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB), would replace Bose.
“Union home minister just informed me that Shri R.N. Ravi is being appointed as Governor of West Bengal. He never consulted me as per the established convention in this regard,” wrote the Trinamool Congress chief.
“Such actions undermine the spirit of the Constitution of India and strike at the very foundation of our federal structure. The Centre must respect the principles of cooperative federalism and refrain from taking unilateral decisions that erode democratic conventions and the dignity of States,” she added.
Since Bose underwent a medical check-up at Kolkata’s Eastern Command Hospital a few months ago, Bharatiya Janata Party’s state president Samik Bhattacharya said the governor might have decided to step down for health reasons.
He said: “I have no means to know why the governor resigned. Probably he is unwell.”
The TMC government had differences with Bose on various issues.
In 2024, a woman who worked at Kolkata’s Raj Bhavan as temporary staff and lived in the staff quarters on campus lodged a police complaint alleging that Bose molested her inside his office on May 2, five days before the third phase of the Lok Sabha polls in Bengal and hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at Raj Bhavan to spend the night during a campaign tour.
According to Article 361 of the Constitution, no criminal proceedings can be initiated against the President and a state governor as long as they are in office. In view of this immunity, Kolkata Police have not registered a case against Bose so far.
In another incident, the government filed a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court of India on July 12, 2024, alleging that Bose had withheld assent to eight Bills passed by the Assembly in 2022 and 2023.
Of these eight Bills, six were passed in 2022 when Dhankhar was the Bengal governor. The Bills seek to replace the governor with the chief minister as chancellor of all state-run and state-aided universities and to replace the governor with the education minister as Visitor at private universities. The matter is yet to be settled in court.
