President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday appointed former Union minister Manoj Sinha as the next Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. He will replace Girish Chandra Murmu who resigned on Wednesday.
In a release confirming the same, the President house said, “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.”
President Kovind accepted Murmu’s resignation on Thursday. There is buzz that he is going to be the next Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.
The move to appoint Sinha as the next Lieutenant Governor is aimed at reaching out to the people of the union territory with a soft political touch, something that Murmu, a former bureaucrat, could not achieve during his nine-month tenure.
After Satyapal Malik, who was governor of erstwhile J&K state, Sinha is the new political touch to the Valley – both Malik and Sinha are grassroot politicians with the latter an alma mater of IIT-BHU, Varanasi. He lost the last Lok Sabha election to strongman and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Afzal Ansari.
Sinha has represented the parliamentary constituency of Ghazipur in eastern Uttar Pradesh thrice in the Lok Sabha. He has also served as minister of communications and minister of state for Railways.
After the stunning victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, Sinha’s name was among the contenders for the post of chief minister. He eventually lost the post to Yogi Adityanath, a five-time MP from Gorakhpur.
He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1999. During his student days, Sinha was the students’ union president in the Banaras Hindu University.
As minister of state for Railways, Sinha handled key assignments including the task to connect several cities in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
