Mannan meets Governor over Bhunia issue

Amid the ongoing war of words between him and senior Congress MLA Manas Bhunia, Leader of Opposition Abdul Mannan today led a party delegation to meet West Bengal Governor K M Tripathi and submitted a memorandum accusing the administration of falsely implicating opposition leaders including Bhunia at the instance of the ruling TMC.
Mannan, in his memorandum to the Governor, alleged that Bhunia has been falsely implicated in a murder case and the state government has been vindictive in stopping Bhunia's attempt to obtain anticipatory bail from court in connection with the case.
The Calcutta High Court on August 8 rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Bhunia, an accused in a Trinamool Congress worker's murder case at the time of West Bengal Assembly polls earlier this year.

Bhunia himself, however, was not in the delegation that met the Governor.
When asked about Bhunia's absence in the team, Mannan said, "It is for him to decide whether he wants to come. It's not that all the Congress MLAs accompanied me today. There are some who could not attend it."
Reacting to Mannan visiting the Governor over his own case, Bhunia said, "The incident happened four months back. What were they doing for so many months? Why were they silent during this time?"

The relation between Bhunia and the party's state leadership has gone sour following his becoming the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chief in the Assembly.

Congress wanted to give the PAC chairman's post to CPI(M), with which it had contested the West Bengal Assembly election.
Bhunia had been show caused sometime back after he refused to step down from the post despite repeated requests by party leaders. Thirty-nine Congress MLAs had also jointly appealed to Bhunia to resign that post.