President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday transferred Jammu & Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik to Goa and appointed Expenditure Secretary Girish Chandra Murmu as the Lieutenant Governor of J&K and Radha Krishna Mathur as the Lieutenant Governor of Ladakh.
The Centre withdrew the special status of Jammu & Kashmir on August 5. The newly created Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh will come into existence on October 31. Though the appointments are made in the name of the President, the Home Ministry is the nodal Ministry.
The Centre also appointed former chief of the Intelligence Bureau Dineshwar Sharma, who was the Centre’s interlocutor for Jammu & Kashmir, as administrator to Lakshadweep.
Mr. Murmu, a 1985-batch IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre, will retire as Expenditure Secretary from the Union Finance Ministry by this month-end. He had served as Principal Secretary to Narendra Modi when he was Gujarat’s Chief Minister.
Mr. Mathur is a retired IAS officer of the 1977 batch. He belonged to the Tripura cadre. He had served as the Chief Information Commissioner, a post he demitted in November 2018.
They replace Mr. Malik, who oversaw the transition phase since the withdrawal of the special status.
Mr. Malik was the former Governor of Bihar before he was shifted to Jammu and Kashmir. He was also given the additional charge of Odisha for a brief period in 2018.
Mr. Kovind also appointed BJP leader from Kerala P.S. Sreedharan Pillai as the Governor of Mizoram.
