Hyderabad: President Droupadi Murmu has appointed new governors for six states and shifted incumbents in three states.
Key among these is the announcement that a 1979-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Gujarat cadre – K. Kailashnathan – has been appointed as the lieutenant governor of Puducherry.
He was the chief principal secretary of Gujarat when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of the state. He served as special principal secretary to subsequent chief ministers on attaining the age of superannuation.
Notably, his term was extended by the state government 11 times, the last one expiring on June 30.
According to a late-night press release from Rashtrpati Bhavan on Saturday, July 27, Murmu has appointed Jishnu Dev Varma as Telangana governor, Haribhau Kisanrao Bagde as Rajasthan governor, Om Prakash Mathur as Sikkim governor, Santosh Kumar Gangwar as Jharkhand governor, Ramen Deka as Chhattisgarh governor and C.H. Vijayashankar as Meghalaya governor.
Jharkhand governor C.P. Radhakrishnan, who was holding the additional charge of Telangana, has been shifted to Maharashtra, Assam governor Gulab Chand Kataria to Punjab and also as Administrator of the Union territory of Chandigarh, and Sikkim governor Lakshman Prasad Acharya to Assam. Acharya will also hold the additional charge of Manipur.
Jishnu Dev Varma (67), the new governor of Telangana, is the scion of a royal family from Tripura and an active participant in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. He was the deputy chief minister of Tripura from 2018 to 2023. He was also the president of the Tripura Badminton Association. He replaced C.P. Radhakrishnan who was holding the additional charge of Telangana while continuing as the regular governor of Jharkhand.
Radhakrishnan took over from Tamilisai Soundararajan following her resignation to contest parliament elections from Chennai on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket.
The President accepted the resignation of Banwarilal, the outgoing governor of Punjab and administrator of the Union territory of Chandigarh.
Similarly, the governors of Rajasthan and Manipur – Kalraj Misra and Anusuya Uikey respectively – were dropped. Meghalaya governor Fagu Chauhan was also dropped to pave the way for former Karnataka minister C.H. Vijayashankar while Chhattisgarh governor Biswabhushan Harichandan completed his term.
A former Maharashtra Speaker Haribhau Kisanrao Bagde will fill the place of Misra in Rajasthan and a senior Rajasthan BJP leader Om Prakash Mathur will go to Sikkim.
Among the new Governors is Santosh Kumar Gangwar, a former Union minister and six-time MP from Bareilly, who was not given a BJP ticket to contest elections this time. Barring one term from 2009 to 2014, he had won every election since 1989. He has been appointed as Jharkhand governor.
