On April 10, within hours of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and finance minister Amit Mitra being subjected to heckling by SFI activists in New Delhi, the state’s governor, MK Narayanan, in Kolkata asked the CPM politburo to apologise. In a statement, he also said those “responsible for the attack and their instigators have forfeited their right to function within a democratic framework”.

On April 12, a full day after hooligans, reportedly led by a Trinamool leader and carrying the party’s flag, vandalised Presidency University in Kolkata, attacked students and teachers and threatened women students with rape, Narayanan visited the university. No, he did not ask the Trinamool Congress to apologise. And he definitely did not find anyone unsuitable to “function within a democratic framework”.

Instead, he apologised to the students: "I accept that as governor and chancellor, I have failed in my responsibility to you. I apologise to students of all universities of Kolkata and Bengal for what has happened.” (More here) According to the same report in the Indian Express, he told the students, "I will wait for what the police investigation reveals; (to find out) how the goons entered the university…”

As a former IPS officer and the chief of the intelligence bureau, that was correct on part of Narayanan: wait for the police probe to wind up before further comments.

It is another matter that he was the same former top cop even two days before that. But he seems to have had misplaced his thinking cap following the ruckus in Delhi; as a result, he jumped to an opinion and drew pretty strong conclusions.

The point here is not that Narayanan has acted with bias, which evidence and common sense suggests he obviously has. The point is to ‘lead’ a police investigation with unwarranted comments that might colour the probe in a certain direction. There was no rhyme or reason for Narayanan to slate the Trinamool Congress — the party had officially denied its activists were involved in the hooliganism at Presidency, while the opposition party and media reports alleged otherwise, saying a TMC leader was photographed leading the mob, who mouthed Trinamool slogans.

Similarly, though the CPM admitted activists from its Delhi unit and students’ wing were involved — some leaders also apologised for manhandling, though with stray laughable attempts to ‘justify’ the part-stripping of Mitra — the Delhi police claimed part of the onus also lay with Banerjee. According to the police, she refused to enter the planning commission headquarters through the VIP entrance despite requests, as Left activists had gathered in numbers outside the main gate by then. On her part, Banerjee is not known to leave any opportunity to brandish her proximity to ‘maati’ and ‘maanush’, reveling in the idea of being grounded and close to the people, and regularly disobeying police requests not to walk amid crowds even back in Kolkata.

Let alone chances of physical harm to Mamata and her band of supporters, police officials say such ‘daring’ walkathons leave open chances of a stampede, leading to major tragedy at events and venues with large gatherings. And though the crowd outside the planning commission building on April 10 wasn’t big enough, the people were fuming at Banerjee’s total indifference to the death of SFI activist Sudipto Gupta, allegedly in police custody.

Therefore, the warning about possible violence given out by the Delhi Police.

As a former policeman, Narayanan should have realised that. And armed with that realisation moderated his unwarranted and out-of-turn critique of the “undemocratic” ruckus and censure of “those responsible and their instigators”, who, the governor said in his wisdom, have “forfeited their right to function within a democratic framework”.

The police probe is still open, Narayanan, and Mamata Banerjee herself has admitted that there was no way she would have entered through the VIP gate. One can even contend that her very act of defying the police order was an attempt at “instigating” the crowd.

And would the governor advocate the same censure — forfeiting right to function within a democratic framework — for those found guilty of the Presidency University vandalism, and their instigators? The latter, Mr Governor, could well include several ministers in Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet who warned of reprisal following the Delhi ruckus, including panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee, who, in January, had in fact warned the governor that the party was "keeping a close watch on him" following his remark about “goondaism” in the state.

"We have shown him the yellow card. If the time comes, we will hand the red card," Mukherjee had told reporters. (More here) The people of Bengal would want the governor himself to play that referee’s role, and show the red and yellow cards with caution and consideration in the very interest of the institution he seeks to defend: democracy.