The political hostility that was inherent, but was kept largely dormant, in the equation between Governor Rajendra Arlekar, a politician with RSS lineage, and the Left-led Kerala government has finally flared up on World Environment Day.

Two ministers boycotted the Environment Day programme organised at the Raj Bhavan after the Governor refused to heed the government's request. One of them, agriculture minister P Prasad, openly said the presence of a large 'Bharathamba' portrait on the dais, an image he described as part of the RSS iconography, was unacceptable. 

In May, when the Raj Bhavan invited RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy to deliver a talk on Operation Sindoor on May 21, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan did express his anger. But his resentment came a tad late, more than a week after the event and that too only when reporters called his attention to the event. This time, the response was swift.

The official World Environment Day function was shifted to the Durbar Hall inside the Secretariat. The Governor went ahead with the Raj Bhavan function but with none from his council of ministers to grace the occasion. Defiant, he lit the inaugural lamp placed before the garlanded Bharat Mata portrait.

"I was told that the minister wanted the Bharat Mata photo and image to be removed from the dais," the Governor said during his inaugural address. In fact, the request was sent from the minister's office a day before, after a team did a recce at the venue.

The minister's office felt that the Bharat Mata portrait, of a haloed ornamented saree-clad lady who has her right arm placed over a lion on which she casually leans and her left arm holding a saffron pennant, was a typical image used at RSS functions. 

"I told them that we will do everything possible, but we cannot remove Bharat Mata, we cannot remove our 'mathrubhumi'," he said, and added: "These are idols for which we are living. We cannot do away with this."

What the Governor considers sacred could be revolting to the Left. For CPI's Prasad, it was untenable to have such blatantly communal images within the confines of a Constitutional office.

Before Prasad was deputed to attended the function at Raj Bhavan, it was general education minister V Sivankutty who was supposed to attend. The Governor himself revealed this. He said that the presence of Bharat Mata "was probably the reason both the ministers have not come here".

The Governor was contemptuous of the government's attitude. "I don't know what sort of thinking we have in our minds. But the issue before us is rather more compelling, our Bharat Mata's environment. We should have presented ourselves for this purpose. But that was not to be," the Governor said.

Sources said that the agriculture minister boycotted the Raj Bhavan function with the consent of the Chief Minister.