Former union minister and BJP leader from Uttar Pradesh, Manoj Sinha, who has been appointed as Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir will be sworn in Friday afternoon.
Sinha arrived in Srinagar on Thursday afternoon. He was received at Sheik-ul-Aalam Airport by Chief Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam, Director General of Police, Dilbag Singh and other officers.
The 61-year old Sinha comes in place of former IAS officer Girish Chandra Murmu, who tendered his resignation on Wednesday night.
A Rashtrapati Bhawan communique on Thursday said the resignation of Murmu has been accepted.
The 60-year-old former IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre had on October 29 last year taken over as the first LG of the union territory after the state of Jammu and Kashmir was downgraded and sliced into two UTs, the other one being Ladakh.
The communique issued by the President’s press secretary Ajay Kumar said, “The President has been pleased to appoint Manoj Sinha to be the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir with effect from the date he assumes charge of his office.”
Earlier, the Centre had appointed Satya Pal Malik, a politician, as governor of the erstwhile state before it was bifurcated into two union territories on August 5 last year.
Official sources here said that the oath of office to Sinha will be administered by Jammu and Kashmir Chief Justice Gita Mittal at a function at Raj Bhawan at the foothills of the Zaberwan range on Friday afternoon.
The warrant of appointment of Sinha, officials said, will be read out by Chief Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam.
Sinha was born on July 1, 1959, in Mohanpura of Ghazipur district of eastern UP and has been actively involved in working for the backward villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh.
His political career began when he was elected as the president of Banaras Hindu University Students Union in 1982. He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1996 and repeated the term in 1999.
Sinha has been a member of the BJP national council from 1989 to 1996. He was elected to the Lower House for a third term in national politics when the BJP swept the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.
A civil engineer and an IIT-BHU alumnus, he has set a rare example by utilising his entire MPLAD Fund for the welfare of the people of his constituency in UP.