New Delhi: The nine new governors and lieutenant-governors appointed by President Droupadi Murmu Saturday night include two senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders headed to crucial poll-bound states: Santosh Gangwar — an OBC leader whose appointment is expected to help the party’s messaging towards the community — to Jharkhand and C.P. Radhakrishnan to Maharashtra.
The other appointees include K. Kailashnathan or ‘KK’, the powerful former IAS officer who ran the Gujarat Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) for many years and is known to have Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ear. He retired from the CMO last month after multiple extensions and has now been made lieutenant-governor of Puducherry. The appointment of KK, known as an able administrator, has been made keeping in mind the infighting rocking the state’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. The Union territory will go to the polls in 2026.
Another leader known to be close to the prime minister, Rajasthan BJP veteran Om Prakash Mathur, has been appointed governor of Sikkim. His colleague from the same state, Gulab Chand Kataria, will now be governor of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-ruled Punjab and administrator of Chandigarh — a move to a more challenging position from presiding over BJP-ruled Assam. The seasoned politician will replace Banwarilal Purohit, who had resigned after several public conflicts with the AAP government.
Former Tripura deputy CM Jishnu Dev Varma’s appointment as governor of Congress-ruled Telangana is another notable move.
Santosh Gangwar — OBC outreach in UP & Jharkhand
The appointment of Gangwar — a veteran BJP leader from the OBC Kurmi community who has won the Bareilly Lok Sabha seat eight times since 1989 — is a notable one in light of the prime minister’s focus on symbolism in politics.
His appointment is not only crucial for the BJP’s messaging in Jharkhand — which has a significant OBC population, estimated by political parties to be about 15 percent — but also for his home state of Uttar Pradesh. In the Lok Sabha elections in UP, the party lost a sizeable chunk of the Kurmi vote — the most numerous OBC group in the state after Yadavs — despite its alliance with Anupriya Patel’s Kurmi-centric Apna Dal (Soneylal).
The Samajwadi Party’s Kurmi card dented the BJP’s prospects in several seats, with the former fielding nine candidates from the community, seven of whom became successful.
In Jharkhand, the BJP’s gambit of appointing an OBC chief minister, Raghubar Das, last time had failed to pay off. While it did well in the OBC and forward caste-dominated seats, it won only two out 28 tribal seats. Now that the party has a tribal state president — Babulal Marandi — the appointment of an OBC governor has symbolic significance.
During a rally in Pilibhit during the Lok Sabha election campaign, Modi had asked Gangwar to be seated beside him, sending a message to OBCs.
Gangwar was denied a Lok Sabha ticket this time despite his popularity in his constituency, where he has lost only once, in 2009. He also never made it to the rank of cabinet minister, having been shuffled between various ministries during the Vajpayee and Modi eras as minister of state or MoS (independent charge) — petroleum finance, textiles, labour and employment. But he has now been rewarded for his long career as a disciplined party worker.
Speaking to ThePrint, Gangwar says, “The governor’s post is a constitutional one and it has its own importance. I will try my best to stick to constitutional norms while serving.”
Also read: Focus on implementation of schemes, better synergy — Modi to BJP CMs at 1st meeting after LS polls
OP Mathur’s sunset in active politics
Mathur has been an associate of the PM from his student days and had one of the longest tenures as in-charge of Gujarat when Modi was CM. His appointment as governor of Sikkim marks his sunset in active politics. Formerly, he not only held the positions of BJP vice president and general secretary, he was also state president of Rajasthan and in-charge of various states at different times, including UP and Chhattisgarh.
When he became PM in 2014, with Amit Shah as BJP president, Modi picked his close friend, Mathur, to oversee UP — the most crucial state electorally, where the party hadn’t held power since 2002.
Mathur, together with Shah and another Rajasthan leader, Sunil Bansal, turned things around, scripting the party’s huge victory in the 2017 UP assembly elections. After that, the PM picked him for another challenging state, Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh, where then-CM Bhupesh Baghel’s welfare schemes were widely perceived as ensuring the BJP had no chance to return to power in the 2023 assembly polls. But Mathur’s political strategy paid dividends, and the party emerged victorious.
It’s another fact that Mathur — essentially an organisation man who rose from the RSS ranks to become a power centre in Rajasthan — never became CM of his state despite his closeness with Modi.
Mathur says, ”I thank the President for considering my name. I will fulfil my constitutional duty during my tenure.”
Maratha outreach through Haribhau Bagade
Former Maharashtra Speaker and ex-minister Haribhau Kisanrao Bagade’s appointment as Rajasthan governor is yet another instance of social engineering — rewarding a trusted Maratha leader even as the community is being roiled by the quota stir in Maharashtra. This is seen as having caused a significant dent for the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, and will be a crucial factor in the coming assembly elections, too.
Called ‘Nana’ by his supporters, Bagade — who came from a humble family and at one point sold newspapers — joined the RSS at the age of 13.
He was first elected to the Maharashtra assembly from Aurangabad East in 1985 and went on to win the seat five times, holding it until 2004. He later held the Phulambri seat from 2014 to 2024. He held ministries — horticulture & employment guarantee, and food & civil supplies — in the Manohar Joshi government in the 1990s, and served as Speaker from 2014 to 2019 when Devendra Fadnavis was CM.
The 78-year-old will take over from Kalraj Mishra, a veteran Brahmin leader from Uttar Pradesh who completed his term this month.
A senior central BJP leader says, “The BJP rewards leaders who have spent their life in the party. Since the BJP’s problem in Maharashtra is the absence of a strong Maratha leader to compete against Sharad Pawar, his appointment will send a symbolic message to the agitating community.”
He adds: “Since the BJP lost space in Rajasthan in the Lok Sabha elections by losing 10 seats, his appointment will be crucial for state politics thanks to his long innings,” referring to how his experience — particularly in running the Maharashtra assembly — could help him counsel the state government.
Also read: UP to Maharashtra, why BJP hasn’t had in-charges in several big states for more than a year
Ramen Deka — message to Assam old guard
Veteran Assam leader Ramen Deka — has been rewarded for not publicly criticising the leadership after being denied a Lok Sabha ticket, and has been appointed governor of Chhattisgarh, another BJP-ruled state. This is in contrast to another former Assam BJP president, Rajen Gohain, who has openly criticised CM Himanta Biswa Sarma.
A senior Assam BJP leader says, “Deka was one of the early leaders in Assam. He was rewarded for not opposing the chief minister. By accommodating the old guard of Assam, the Centre wants to send a message.”
Jishnu Dev Varma, 1st governor from Tripura
Jishnu Dev Varma, a former deputy chief minister of Tripura and member of the state’s erstwhile royal family, has been appointed governor of Telangana. Dev Varma, who was passed over for the chief minister’s post in favour of Biplab Dev and later Manik Saha, also served as finance minister in Dev’s cabinet. He was defeated by a TIPRA Motha candidate in the 2023 assembly elections.
In a post on X, Dev Varma said he was the first person from Tripura to become a governor.
— Jishnu Dev Varma (@Jishnu_Devvarma) July 27, 2024
Known as ‘Nani Karta’ and often referred to as a ‘prince’, Dev Varma — also a poet and writer — has been in Tripura politics for over five decades. He was originally with the Congress before shifting to the BJP in 1993. He was made a party national general secretary in the early days of 1999. He contested the 1998 and 1999 Lok Sabha polls and the assembly elections of 1998 but was defeated in all three despite getting 29 percent of the vote in 1998
The BJP, which had lost four seats in the last Tripura assembly election in 2023, is showing that it has kept its focus on the northeastern states by making one of its old guard a governor.
Mysore man for Kuruba outreach
C.H. Vijayashankar, a former two-time MP from Mysore, who quit the BJP to join the Congress before returning in 2019, has been made governor of Meghalaya. A leader of the Kuruba caste, he had made inroads for the BJP in the Mysore region — traditionally dominated by the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) — with his Lok Sabha victories in 1998 and 2004. He also unsuccessfully contested against former PM H.D. Deve Gowda in Hassan in 2014.
Vijayashankar, who also served as a minister in the Karnataka government from 2010 to 2011 — holding several portfolios including forest and ecology — left the BJP in 2017. He was the Congress’s candidate in Mysore in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but was defeated by Hindutva firebrand Pratap Simha. He returned to the BJP after that, alleging that he’d been sidelined in the Congress, and contested the Periyapatna assembly seat in the 2023 Karnataka elections, which he lost. His appointment as governor shows the BJP doesn’t want to dilute its focus in Karnataka and its continuing attention to social engineering in the state.
C.P. Radhakrishnan, until now the governor of Jharkhand, has been moved to Maharashtra, another crucial state where the BJP suffered major losses in the Lok Sabha elections. Twice elected to Parliament from Coimbatore (in 1998 and 1999), he later served as the BJP’s Tamil Nadu president from 2004 to 2007. He is the fifth person from Tamil Nadu to be made a governor during the Modi government’s tenure, following La. Ganesan, Tamilisai Soundararajan, V. Shanmuganathan and former chief justice of India P. Sathasivam
Radhakrishnan will also be Maharashtra’s third governor in just five years, after Bhagat Singh Koshyari and Ramesh Bais.
Also read: BJP puts Anil Antony in charge of Christian-dominated Meghalaya & Nagaland, no changes in big states
