Manoj Sinha
lative assembly and Ladakh without one — on August 5, 2019.
Murmu has been appointed the Comptroller and Auditor General of India “with effect from the date he assumes charge of his office”, the government said on Thursday night.
In Srinagar, chief secretary BVR Subrahmanyam and director general of police Dilbagh Singh welcomed Sinha at the airport, where he landed at around 3pm and received a guard of honour. He went straight to the Raj Bhavan and was briefed about the ground situation in the politically sensitive region.
“The new lieutenant governor was given first-hand account of the situation by officials... He will be chairing a review meeting of officials only after the oath ceremony,” said a senior J&K official privy to the details.
Senior BJP leaders welcomed Sinha’s appointment and hoped that he will usher in economic development. “A gentle, erudite and experienced leader with loads of administrative experience as a minister to head J&K administration. J&K to progress on path of development with renewed vigour,” BJP general secretary Ram Madhav tweeted.
Jitendra Singh, minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office, said: “...He [Sinha] carries with him a rich combination of both political as well as administrative experience.”
Sinha’s political career began when he was elected the president of Banaras Hindu University students’ union in 1982. He became a Lok Sabha member for the first time in 1996 from Ghazipur, and won election from the seat in 1999 as well. Sinha was elected to the Lower House for a third time in 2014, when the BJP came to power at the Centre with a landslide win. Sinha held the portfolio of minister of state for railways between May 2014 and July 2016, and was later given the independent charge of the ministry of telecommunications.
“Let’s see how things unfold once he takes over,” said National Conference (NC) parliamentarian Hasnain Masoodi.
Earlier in the day, a Rashtrapati Bhavan communique said Murmu’s resignation had been accepted. Murmu, who held the post of J&K LG for just over nine months, left for Delhi from Jammu on a plane around 11:40am. Murmu’s resignation came in the backdrop of his suggestions to allow 4G telecom services in the Valley and his comments about the timing of elections in the UT that prompted a terse note from the Election Commission reminding him to respect the poll body’s remit.
Former J&K chief minister and NC leader Omar Abdullah termed Murmu’s exit unceremonious. “In a strange coincidence, both the last Governor of J&K state [Satyapal Malik] & the 1st Lt Governor of the Union Territory of J&K have been removed when they least expected it..,” he tweeted.
Noor Ahmad Baba, a political analyst, said the developments are another “experiment” by the Union government. “They begun with a bureaucrat [Murmu], and after one year, when things did not change much on ground, they have experimented with a person with a political background who may try to create his own space and think independently.”