"But by the time West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar summoned Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to brief him on the deteriorating law and order situation in West Bengal in July 2020, much water had flown under the Second Hooghly Bridge and many lives scratched out in Bengal. On social media, Dhankhar said Opposition leaders were hunted by ‘partisan police acting as political workers’. ‘Given enormity of decline in law and order have urged CM @MamataOfficial to urgently brief me. This as …political leaders and opposition MPs and MLAs being virtually hunted out of public space by partisan police acting as political workers. This cannot be allowed in democracy,’ Dhankhar tweeted on 23 July 2020. The governor said it was a ‘grim situation’, an ‘alarming decline’ and a ‘worrisome spectacle’. ‘We cannot afford to have a police that does not act in accordance with law but acts in a partisan manner like a political worker of the ruling party,’ he said. A report in The Hindu on 9 January 2020 said: ‘West Bengal reported the maximum number of political murders in 2018, says a report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The number of murders due to “political reason” in West Bengal stood at 12, followed by nine in Bihar and seven in Maharashtra. In all, 54 political murders were reported in the country in 2018. In 2017, the number of such cases stood at 98. The data are not in consonance with an advisory sent by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to the West Bengal government last year. In an advisory sent on June 15, the MHA had said political violence in West Bengal had claimed 96 lives and that the “unabated violence” over the years was a matter of deep concern.’"