Even as she exudes confident control in her televised administrative meetings, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has reasons to be worried. They go beyond the matrix of operations involved in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, from feeding the needy and protecting health workers to contact tracing—the Centre and the BJP have sharply attacked the Trinamool government over handling the pandemic. Union minister of state Babul Supriyo’s charge that the state government is suppressing facts regarding actual numbers of the afflicted and the dead, with the same being reiterated by a state BJP delegation to the governor, has angered Mamata. A complaint and an appeal for courtesy were promptly lodged with PM Narendra Modi. However, the allegations have some resonance in the letter purportedly written by the Union home ministry on April 10.

In that letter written by deputy secretary, MHA (Internal Security Division) Srinivasan K., the chief secretary and DGP of West Bengal is reminded of an earlier missive dated April 4, where the MHA drew attention to the rampant violation...