Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh get first Lt Guvs; Malik shifted to Goa

TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ Girish Chander Murmu, a senior Indian Administrative Services officer, who worked closely with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Gujarat and is currently the expenditure secretary, was on Friday appointed the first Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, six days ahead of the state becoming a union territory. He will be administered oath of office on October 31 in Srinagar after which he will be the administrative head of Kashmir and Jammu provinces.

The state’s third province — Ladakh– has been carved out as a separate Union Territory. Former defence secretary R K Mathur was appointed the first Lt Governor of strategically located Ladakh. The 65-year-old bureaucrat, belonging to 1977 IAS batch, retired as chief information commissioner last year. He will be administered oath of office on October 31 in Leh. The present governor of the state Satya Pal Malik moves to Goa for the remainder of his tenure as the governor. He was first appointed governor of Bihar in September 2017 and later shifted to Jammu and Kashmir last year in August.

With the appointment of Murmu, the tenure of advisors to the Jammu and Kashmir Governor — K Vijay Kumar, Khursheed Ganai, K Sikandan and K K Sharma — may come to an end as all of them are seniors in service to the new Lt Governor. In another order, former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief and Union government appointed interlocutor to Jammu and Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, has been appointed as administrator to Lakshadweep. An order to this effect was issued by the Union home ministry. BJP’s Kerala president P S Sreedharan Pillai has been appointed as the new governor of Mizoram, the Rashtrapati Bhawan statement said. Assam governor Jagdish Mukhi has been holding the additional charge of Mizoram.