India / Satya Pal Malik appointed as Governor of Meghalaya

New Delhi: Satya Pal Malik has been transferred as the Governor of Meghalaya, replacing Tathagata Roy who completed his five-year tenure on the post in the northeastern state, from Goa, a Rashtrapati Bhavan communique said on Tuesday.

Bhagat Singh Koshyari, Governor of Maharashtra, has been asked to discharge the functions of the Goa Governor in addition to his own duties, the communique said.

Malik takes over from Roy, who completed his five-year tenure by serving as governor of Tripura for three years and the remaining in Meghalaya.

Malik was the governor of Jammu and Kashmir from August 2018 to October 2019. He was appointed as the Goa Governor in October last year soon after Parliament passed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill, which paved the way for the bifurcation of the state into two Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

Malik during his tenure in Jammu and Kashmir stoked a controversy after he claimed that he did not received a letter from political parties staking claim to form the government in the former state after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) coalition government fell. He later said the that the fax machine in Raj Bhavan was not working.

In Goa too, he vetoed the government’s proposal to construct a new Raj Bhavan and said the construction should be put off till the state’s financial condition improves.

Malik’s political journey began in 1965 and was first elected to the Rajya Sabha, representing the Lok Dal, in 1980. He was also elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Congress party leader in 1986. Malik later joined the BJP and was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2005.