Suvendu Adhikari holds meeting with West Bengal Guv Jagdeep Dhankhar

Former West Bengal minister Suvendu Adhikari, who joined the BJP last week, met Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar here on Monday. The meeting took place at the Raj Bhavan for over 30 minutes.

The former TMC heavyweight visited the governor's official residence after formally informing Assembly Speaker Biman Bandyopadhyay about his decision to resign as the MLA. Adhikari, however, did not speak to waiting journalists while exiting the Raj Bhavan after the meeting.

On December 16, he had sought Dhankar's intervention, apprehending that the police may implicate him in criminal cases due to political vendetta. Sharing on Twitter a copy of Adhikari's letter to him, Dhankhar had said he was taking "expected steps".

"I am constrained to seek your intervention as the constitutional head so that police and administration apparatus in the state is dissuaded from implicating me and my associate followers in criminal cases out of political motivation and vendetta," the letter read.

Adhikari claimed he had quit Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's cabinet dictated by a "sense of duty and public welfare" and this change in political stance is spurring those in authority to be in "vendetta mode" against him. He joined the BJP on December 19 in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah at a public meeting in Medinipur. 

(Photo Credit: PTI)