Arif Muhammad Khan a former Congress leader who supported Modi Govt on Triple Talaq Bill and Abrogation of Article 370 has been made Kerala Governor. Former union minister and new Governor of Himachal Pradesh Bandaru Dattatreya was charged with abetting the suicide of Rohith Vemula
President Ram Nath Kovind appointed and transferred a total of five governors on Sunday. Kalraj Mishra, the Governor of Himachal Pradesh, has replaced Kalyan Singh as the Rajasthan governor.
Kalraj Mishra has been replaced by former Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya as Himachal Governor. Bandaru has been a controversial figure in Rohith Vemula suicide case.
In January 2016, Dattatreya was charged with abetting the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a reserch scholar at the University of Hyderabad. Following allegations that he was instrumental in getting Vemula along with four other students suspended from the university’s hostel, he was booked under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The previous August, he wrote a letter to Smriti Irani, the minister of Human Resource Development claiming the university had turned into a “den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics”. Dattatreya denied any wrongdoing and claimed that he had received the letter from Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and just forwarded it to Irani with his official letterhead.[20] Other students of the university claimed that his letter was a “part of the larger discrimination of Dalit students”.
Tamil Nadu BJP president Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan has been appointed as the Governor of Telangana, replacing ESL Narasimhan.
Bhagat Singh Koshyari has been appointed as the new Governor of Maharashtra. Koshyari will replace Vidyasagar Rao.
Arif Mohammed Khan has been appointed as the Kerala governor in place of P Sathasivam. Khan had earlier quit the Rajiv Gandhi government over the Shah Bano case and has been cited many times by BJP in triple talaq debates. He has also supported the government on the Article 370 move.
After being appointed as the new Kerala governor, Khan said, “It is an opportunity to serve. Fortunate to be born in a country like India which is so vast and rich in diversity. It is a great opportunity for me to know this part of India, which forms boundary of India and is called god’s own country.”
