Two months into his tenure as the Governor of West Bengal, C V Ananda Bose, whose mother tongue is Malayalam, got his first Bengali lesson through the ritual of “hatekhori” from three children in the presence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at Raj Bhavan on January 26, 2023.
The age-old hatekhori tradition, through which children first learn the Bengali alphabet, was accompanied by a gift from Banerjee – the Bengali primer ‘Barnaparichay’, written by the 19th century social reformer and educator Iswarchandra Vidyasagar.
Though Bose had begun his term by saying he would act as a “conduit for cooperation”, this early bonhomie did not last long.
Following former Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar’s own tumultuous tenure as West Bengal Governor, Bose’s time at Raj Bhavan too was marked by confrontation with the Trinamool Congress-led state government and ups and downs in his relationship with Banerjee.
Before he became the Bengal Governor, Bose completed his schooling in Kerala and earned a PhD from BITS, Pilani and was a fellow at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. His father Vasudevan Nair was a freedom fighter who fought alongside Subhash Chandra Bose, after whom Ananda Bose was named.
Bose began his career as a 1977-batch IAS officer from the Kerala cadre and served in several administrative roles in Kerala and at the Centre, including in the departments of education, forest and environment, and labour. He also served as the Principal Secretary to late Congress veteran K Karunakaran during his term as the Kerala CM.
Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Bose formally joined the BJP. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was tasked by the Union Labour Ministry with preparing an action plan for the welfare of migrant workers. In November 2022, Bose was appointed as the West Bengal Governor.
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It was in June 2023 when the first major confrontation began, when Bose appointed interim Vice-Chancellors to 11 state universities without consulting the TMC government. The matter was dragged by the state government to the Supreme Court, which intervened to end the deadlock by forming a selection committee headed by former Chief Justice of India U U Lalit to oversee the appointment of the vice-chancellors.
In June 2023, the Governor launched a “peace room” at Raj Bhavan to register complaints of poll violence just ahead of the state’s panchayat elections. Calling himself a “Ground Zero Governor”, Bose had also made impromptu visits to poll violence-hit rural areas, adding fuel to the Opposition parties’ claims of lawlessness and inadequate deployment of forces, while drawing accusations from the TMC of “interfering in the election process”.
After the violence in these panchayat polls, Bose even met with Union Home Minister Amit Shah. “The darkest hour is just before dawn. There will be light at the end of the tunnel. The only message I could get today is: If winter comes, can spring be far behind? Good will happen in the days to come,” Bose said to the media after the meeting.
Around the same time, in July 2023, Bose also ordered an inquiry into former North Bengal University Vice-Chancellor Om Prakash Mishra, over alleged irregularities during Mishra’s tenure. Incidentally, Mishra had been among the leading faces in the agitation against Bose after he appointed interim Vice-Chancellors in June that year without consulting the government. Just weeks later, in response, the TMC government inducted Mishra into the North Bengal University’s Executive Council.
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In August 2023, Bose drew the ire of the TMC, which alleged that the Governor had refused to give his assent to as many as 19 Bills that had been passed by the Assembly. However, after holding talks with Banerjee, Bose later cleared many of these Bills, but not before sparking a political row in Bengal.
In May 2024, Bose found himself at the centre of another controversy after a female employee at Raj Bhavan accused the Governor of sexual harassment. Bose denied the allegations, claiming it was an “engineered narrative” for the sake of “election benefits” during the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign. After the allegations emerged, Raj Bhavan had barred Kolkata Police from entering its premises.
However, owing to the immunity that the Governor enjoys under Article 361 of the Constitution, no criminal proceedings were initiated against Bose during his term. The TMC had taken out protest marches in Kolkata in the wake of the incident, with Banerjee even questioning the “silence” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was scheduled to visit Raj Bhavan just hours after the allegations emerged.
But after Banerjee made remarks that women felt “unsafe visiting Raj Bhavan”, Bose filed a defamation case against the CM in the Calcutta High Court.
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The issue of women’s safety became another point of contention between Bose and the TMC government in September 2024, after the rape and murder of a junior doctor inside the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. Amid widespread outrage and protests over the incident, Bose reacted strongly and called for a boycott of the CM, whom he referred to as “Lady Macbeth”.
In November 2025, TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee launched a sharp attack against Bose, accusing the Governor of “sheltering the BJP’s criminals in Raj Bhavan” and “giving them guns and bombs, and telling them to attack Trinamool workers”. Bose then personally led a live-broadcast combing search of the Raj Bhavan premises, and the Governor’s office later filed a police complaint against Kalyan Banerjee.
This conflict had emerged amid the Election Commission’s contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, an exercise that was backed by Bose while the TMC has been openly attacking the BJP and the poll body over the alleged deletions of legitimate voters. However, after CM Banerjee raised concerns over the alleged suicides of poll workers engaged in the SIR, Bose said the CM’s “concerns should be examined in detail and in depth”.
Later in November 2025, while commemorating his third year as the Governor, Bose set aside the long-held bitterness between his office and the state’s ruling party. Speaking fondly of his experience in Bengal, Bose described his time working in the state as “great” and expressed a desire to see more of rural Bengal.
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“I will dedicate myself to the service of the people of Bengal, particularly the children, the new generations, the old men, all sections of society. In the coming two years that I have here, I will certainly be spending more time with the people in the villages. Raj Bhavan’s gates will be open for the people. My experience in the state has been extremely good. There have been ups and downs in the relationship with the political executive, but that is part of a democracy,” Bose said.
On Thursday, Bose resigned as the Bengal Governor, just weeks ahead of the state Assembly elections, citing his “ill health”. Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi is set to replace him, sources in the Central government said.