New Delhi: Former bureaucrat C.V. Ananda Bose was on Thursday appointed as the new governor of West Bengal.
Bose (71) is a 1977-batch (retired) Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Kerala cadre who served as the state’s chief secretary.
“The President of India is pleased to appoint Dr CV Ananda Bose as regular Governor of West Bengal,” a communique issued by the Rashtrapati Bhavan said.
His appointment will take effect on the date he assumes charge of his office, it added.
In 2019, Bose joined the BJP. In January 2021, he signed a letter endorsing the so-called “love jihad” law that was enacted by the Uttar Pradesh government.
Bose said he will aim to create a “rainbow bridge” between the state and the Centre, upon assuming his position.
Manipur governor La Ganesan had been holding the additional charge of West Bengal since July, when incumbent Jagdeep Dhankhar was selected as the ruling National Democratic Alliance’s candidate for the vice presidential elections. He subsequently won.
Bose’s appointment comes a day after West Bengal BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar had claimed that the state would soon get a new governor who would follow the footsteps of Dhankhar, who had frequent run-ins with the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government.
Prior to his election as the vice president of India, Dhankhar was the governor of West Bengal for nearly three years.
“We expect that very soon, West Bengal will have a new governor. And we believe that he would follow former governor Jagdeep Dhankhar’s footsteps,” Majumdar had told a news channel.
Born in Mannanam in Kerala’s Kottayam, Bose last served as an administrator in the National Museum here before superannuating in 2011. He was called a “man of ideas” by Prime Minister Modi, according to Bose’s website.
He is known as the ‘make over man’ of the service and a housing expert, he was described by the Kerala government as a “lord of ideas” and by former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh as an “inspired civil servant”, the website added.
Bose’s concept of ‘affordable housing for all Indians’ is reflected in the national project to provide houses for all, his website says.
He was also the head of the Supreme Court Committee on the treasures of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala.
He has brought out 350 publications including 45 books in English, Malayalam and Hindi consisting of novels, short stories, poems and essays.
Bose has worked both in his cadre state Kerala and in the Centre in different positions.
He has been the district collector of Quilon district (now Kollam) in Kerala, served as the secretary to the then chief minister of the state and as additional secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, among others.
A former chairman of Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC), Bose is the chairman of the Habitat Alliance, in consultative status with the United Nations, according to his website.
He is also the recipient of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship. Bose is also the first ever Fellow of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, it says.
(With PTI inputs)
