Three months after he completed a full five-year term, A.P. Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan has been given a five-year-long extension by the President of India on Saturday.
A second innings was expected for Mr. Narasimhan, currently the senior-most Governor in the country. He assumed office as full-fledged Governor on January 22, 2010, a time when the State was passing through a turbulent period caused by the agitation for a separate Telangana.
Mr. Narasimhan will be sworn-in for his second term as Governor at a formal ceremony at the Raj Bhavan at 1 p.m. on May 3. As soon as the President's communiqué on the appointment of the Governors was released, officers of the Raj Bhavan, led by the Secretary to Governor N. Ramesh Kumar, invited Mr. Narasimhan to cut a cake to mark the occasion.
A former IPS officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre, Mr. Narasimhan retired as the Director of Intelligence Bureau in 2006-end and was appointed the Governor of Chhattisgarh soon after on January 19, 2007. He was given additional charge of Andhra Pradesh on December 28, 2009 after the then Governor Narayan Dutt Tiwari was forced to resign in the wake of a scandal.
Mr. Narasimhan's stint did not go down well with Telangana protagonists and some MPs even opposed a second term for the 67-year-old Governor on the ground that he had sent misleading reports to the Centre on the agitation and situation in the State. But apparently, the Centre thought otherwise and thought it fit to give him a second term for his key role in restoring the confidence of the public and the industry during the agitation and for playing the role of a hard taskmaster in his capacity as Chancellor of Universities.
