KOLKATA: In a snub to the Centre's order West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that she cannot release the state's chief secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay at this 'critical hour' of crisis when the state is grappling with COVID-19 and post Cyclone Yaas' management. 

Within hours after a political row erupted over Banerjee not attending a Cyclone Yaas review meeting with PM Modi, on Friday, May 28 night Bandyopadhyay was ordered to move to the centre, the same day he was slated to retire.

In a five-page letter, Banerjee urged the PM to reconsider the Centre's decision to recall the top bureaucrat after giving him a three-month extension. In a point-blank manner, she also asked if the latest order was in any way related to her meeting with PM Modi in Kalaikunda.

On Friday, Banerjee had arrived 30 minutes late for a review meeting with PM Modi and West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar on the impact of Cyclone Yaas in the state at Kalikunda Air Base, and according to reports, she handed over papers related to the impact of the cyclone and left for other meetings.

In her letter, Banerjee said the Centre had agreed to the state government's request for extension of the Bengal chief secretary's tenure by three months to fight the pandemic in the state and the latest order to recall him was in 'violation of applicable laws and against the public interest.'

"I humbly request you to withdraw, recall and reconsider your decision and rescind the latest so-called order in the larger public interest," Banerjee wrote in the latter. 

The CM also mentioned in her letter that the 'all-India services and the laws, including the rules framed for it, have federal cooperation as the cornerstone of its legal architecture'.

Banerjee said the aim of the all-India services has been to 'protect and give greater cohesion to the federal foundations' of the Constitution.

'With unilateral and non-consultative orders being issued, the federal system is gravely endangered and severely undermined. If a chief secretary of a state can be asked to be relieved like this how can the lower bureaucracy take, obey and implement orders in their letter or spirit from the chief minister, other ministers and officers?" she wrote

'I presume and hope that you do not want to damage the federal amity... and destroy the morale of all the All India Service officers working in various states,' Banerjee said.