Hyderabad: Telangana governor and Puducherry lieutenant governor Tamilisai Soundararajan has resigned from her dual posts.
A Raj Bhavan press communique here said she sent in her resignation to President Draupadi Murmu.
Sources said Soundararajan is set to enter the election fray as a BJP candidate from either the Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari or Chennai (South) constituencies.
She was state president of the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit before taking over as governor of Telangana on September 9, 2019. She was given additional charge as lieutenant governor of Puducherry on February 18, 2021.
She will return to Chennai this evening. Her secretary Surendra Mohan was transferred by the state government two days ago.
Soundararajan had a running feud with former Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, so much so that she aired her displeasure with him on several occasions.
When the new Congress government was installed in December, she targeted the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) government led by Rao in her maiden address to the joint session of the legislature.
The cracks between the Raj Bhavan and the government began to show up in 2022 when the government held the assembly’s budget session in March without the conventional governor’s address.
Soundararajan protested but the government clarified that there was no need for her presence as the earlier session of the house five months prior was not prorogued.
The standoff took an embarrassing turn when the governor did not approve eight Bills passed by the assembly on the grounds that she needed more time to get clarifications on them.
Ultimately, the Bills were still pending in her office.
She held the Republic Day celebrations at Raj Bhavan on court orders after the government confined the occasion to the chief minister’s official bungalow citing COVID-19 restrictions.
The government withdrew protocol honours to her when she left the state. Neither the collectors nor superintendents of police received her.
The government also did not clear the traffic congestion on roads when she travelled.
Rao sent in his resignation to Soundararajan after the BRS’s defeat in the November 2023 assembly election through his officer on special duty.
