Astute political skills may be key for new J&K L-G Sinha
NEW DELHI: Non-controversial, meticulous and amiable are among the descriptors that people who know him use to characterize Manoj Sinha, who made his debut in campus politics in 1982 in Banaras Hindu University and went on to become a quietly forceful presence in the rough and tumble of Uttar Pradesh politics.
It is those qualities that weighed in favour of the 61-yearold politician when decision makers at the Centre sat down to pick a successor to bureaucrat GC Murmu as lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir. Murmu stepped down from the post on Wednesday evening after more than nine months in the hot seat.
A three-time member of Parliament and a minister in the Narendra Modi government’s first term at Centre, Sinha’s appointment as lieutenant governor of a newly formed Union territory comes at a time when the region is grappling with multiple issues, from security concerns to a tumultuous social and political landscape .
Sinha was first elected to the Lok Sabha from Ghazipur in 1996, and retained his seat in 1999 and 2014. He held the portfolio of minister of state for railways between May 2014 and July 2016 and was later given independent charge of the ministry of telecommunications as well.
His skills as an administrator, his ability as an astute politician and the perception that he is a man of consensus are being seen as key attributes for a position where he will have to oversee restoration of the political process, reconstitution of the assembly, a possible reversal to statehood and the most challenging task -winning the trust of the people.
Choosing a politician instead of a bureaucrat or a retired army man is also being read as a signal of New Delhi’s intent to foster ties with the state’s bureaucracy and its people and bank on Sinha’s ability to juggle statecraft with legislative limitations.
The state is looking for a person who can amalgamate the political savviness of Satya Pal Malik with the administrative rigor of Murmu, said a person familiar with the thinking behind the appointment.
To be sure, Malik’s tenure, which came to an end after the August 5, 2019 reorganisation of the state into two Union territories, was marked by controversies.
The garrulous governor, who left the administration and political bosses in New Delhi red-faced sometimes with his utterances, was otherwise known to be accessible to the man on the street, the media and the political class--barring that one instance when Raj Bhavan’s Fax machine failed to work as politicians tried to reach him to stake their claim to form the government after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)- Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government fell in June 2018.
In contrast, Murmu, who has worked closely with Prime Minister Narendra Modi was conspicuous by his silence and absence from the Raj Bhavan .
The departure from his safe posturing came only when his suggestions to allow 4G telecom services in the Valley and his free-wheeling comments about the timing of elections in the Union territory earned him the Centre’s disapproval and a terse note from the Election Commission reminding him to respect the poll body’s remit.
Sinha’s appointment is being seen as an indication of the Centre’s will to initiate the political process in J&K, said a second person aware of the details.
An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi, formerly known as Banaras Engineering College, Sinha overcame the caste faultiness in his constituency of Ghazipur, which was also once a left bastion. He is not unfamiliar with tricky political turf.
It was for this reason that Sinha, wedded to the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’S ideological mentor, was considered a front-runner for the chief minister’s post after the BJP’S victory in the assembly elections in UP in 2017. He was pipped to the post at the last minute by Yogi Adityanath.
If he was disappointed at losing the job, he did not show it, said a party colleague.
According to this colleague, Sinha proceeded to push ahead development schemes in Varanasi, the PM’S Lok Sabha constituency.