President Droupadi Murmu on Sunday appointed new governors to nine states including Manipur, which has been gripped by ethnic violence for more than a year.
Lakshman Prasad Acharya, who has been the governor of Sikkim, was appointed as Assam’s governor. He has also been given the additional charge of Manipur, replacing Anusuiya Uikey who was Manipur’s governor from February 2023.
Manipur has been gripped by ethnic clashes between the Meitei and tribal Kuki communities since May 2023. The violence has left at least 225 persons dead and displaced 60,000 persons since the beginning of the clashes.
Om Prakash Mathur, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Rajasthan, will assume the charge of Sikkim’s governor.
Gulab Chand Kataria was moved from Assam to Punjab. He was also appointed as the administrator of Chandigarh, a Union territory. The president accepted the resignation of Banwarilal Purohit who was serving as the governor of Punjab and Chandigarh’s administrator since August 2021.
Haribhau Kisanrao Bagde, a former Maharashtra Assembly speaker and BJP leader, was appointed as the governor of Rajasthan.
Jishnu Dev Varma, who was Tripura’s deputy chief minister between 2018 and 2023, was named as the governor of Telangana, where the Congress is in power.
BJP leader and former Union minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar was made the governor of Jharkhand. An eight-time Lok Sabha MP, Gangwar did not contest the 2024 general election.
CP Radhakrishnan, who was serving as Jharkhand’s governor with additional charge of Telangana, was shifted to Maharashtra. He also held the additional charge of Puducherry as its lieutenant governor.
Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand are scheduled to take place later this year.
K Kailashnathan, a retired Indian Administrative Service officer, was appointed as the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry. Kailashnathan served as the chief principal secretary to Narendra Modi between 2013 and 2014, when he was the chief minister of Gujarat, according to The Indian Express.
CH Vijayashankar, a Karnataka BJP leader who switched to the Congress before returning to the Hindutva party in 2019, was made the governor of Meghalaya.
Ramen Deka, former MP from Assam’s Mangaldoi, was appointed as the governor of Chhattisgarh.
The appointments will take effect from the dates when they assume charge of their office, the president’s secretariat said in a press communique.
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