President of India Droupadi Murmu on Sunday appointed governors in 12 states and a Union Territory while accepting the resignation of two — Maharashtra’s Bhagat Singh Koshyari and Ladakh’s Radha Krishnan Mathur. Of the 13, Meghalaya and Nagaland are election-bound states.
Murmu has appointed Lieutenant General Kaiwalya Trivikram Parnaik (retired) as Governor of Arunachal Pradesh; Lakshman Prasad Acharya as Governor of Sikkim; C P Radhakrishnan as Governor of Jharkhand; Shiv Pratap Shukla as Governor of Himachal Pradesh; Gulab Chand Kataria as Governor of Assam; and Justice (retired) S Abdul Nazeer as Governor of Andhra Pradesh.
Former Supreme Court judge Justice S Abdul Nazeer was part of the historic judgment on the property dispute in Ayodhya. He was also part of the five-judge bench in the ‘triple talaq’ matter but had delivered a minority verdict along with the then Chief Justice of India J S Khehar.
Apart from making fresh appointments, Murmu has reshuffled seven governors. Andhra Pradesh governor Biswa Bhusan Harichandan has been appointed as Governor of Chhattisgarh; Chhattisgarh governor Sushri Anusuiya Uikye has been shifted as Governor of Manipur; Manipur governor La Ganesan has been appointed as Governor of Nagaland; Bihar governor Phagu Chauhan is now Governor of Meghalaya; Himachal Pradesh governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar has been shifted as Governor of Bihar, Jharkhand governor Ramesh Bais is now Governor of Maharashtra; and Arunachal Pradesh governor Brigadier B D Mishra (retired) has been appointed as L-G of Ladakh.
“The above appointments will take effect from the dates they assume charge of their respective offices,” it said.
Bais, the new Governor of Maharashtra, had started his political journey as a councillor in the Raipur Municipal Corporation in 1980 and went on to win the Raipur Lok Sabha constituency seven times for the BJP, earning a reputation as a giant killer. He also held several important posts in the party, before he was picked for the gubernatorial post in Tripura in 2019.
Bais moved into the Raj Bhavan in Ranchi in July 2021. Among the leaders he had defeated during his political journey as a legislator include Congress bigwig V C Shukla and current Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel. In his first poll loss in Raipur since 1989, Bais was defeated by Shukla by a mere 900 votes in 1991. However, Bais challenged the verdict before the high court and won.
