Manoj Sinha appointed Lt-Governor of Jammu and Kashmir after Murmu resigns

Arun Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jammu, August 6

In overnight developments, the President of India has appointed former Minister of State Manoj Sinha Lt-Governor of Jammu and Kashmir in place of G C Murmu, who resigned on Wednesday.

An early morning Rashtrapati Bhavan communiqué on Thursday said: “The President has accepted the resignation of Girish Chandra Murmu as Lieutenant-Governor of Jammu and Kashmir.” It also announced that “The President has been pleased to appoint Shri Manoj Sinha to be the Lieutenant-Governor of Jammu and Kashmir with effect from the date he assumes charge of his office vice Shri Girish Chandra Murmu.”

The appointment has put to rest all speculation over the new incumbent of the office of Lt-Governor of the Union Territory of J&K.

The 61-year-old was born on July 1, 1959, in Mohanpura of Ghazipur district of eastern UP and has been actively involved in working for backward villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Sinha’s political career started when he was elected the president of Banaras Hindu University Students Union in 1982. He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1996 and repeated the term in 1999.

Sinha was a member of the BJP national council from 1989 to 1996. He was elected to the Lok Sabha for a third term when the BJP swept the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. He was former Minister of State for Railways and later held an independent charge of the Ministry of Communication.

Sinha, however, lost to BSP’s Afzal Ansari in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Ghazipur. 

Also read: Change is under way in J&K, Ladakh: External Affairs Minister

The developments started last evening when J&K was in the midst of mulling over the first anniversary of the August 5 decisions of revocation of Article 370 and bifurcation of the state of J&K into two Union Territories of Ladakh and J&K.

Murmu, a 1985-batch IAS officer of Gujarat cadre, was appointed as the first L-G of Jammu and Kashmir last October after the formation of the new Union Territory under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019. He is expected to get an appointment at the Centre.

The two Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh came into existence on October 31 after the Narendra Modi government abrogated provisions of Article 370 that granted a special status to Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated the state into two UTs.

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