Some interesting details about India's governors: Part 3 | Number Theory

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This is the last of a three-part data journalism series based on HT’s Governors in India database. The first part covered the methodology and appointment patterns under various presidents and prime ministers. The second part of this data journalism series looked at the professional, regional and social backgrounds of governors in India. The concluding part will offer some interesting details about India’s governors.

Raj Bhavan, Tamil Nadu.

Some interesting details about India's governors: Part 3

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  Governors have become older with the Republic

  An analysis of 816 out of the 843 names in HT’s governors’ database for which date of birth could be ascertained shows that the average age of governors has been rising with time. This was just about 60 in the first few decades after independence, crossed 65 by the 1980s and has been more than 70 since 1997. India’s youngest governor at the time of appointment was Karan Singh, who was appointed a governor at the age of 34 years. Biswabhusan Harichandan is the oldest person to assume this office. He was 88 when appointed as the governor of Chhattisgarh in 2023.
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  Some governors have served multiple states simultaneously

  Lallan Prasad Singh and B.K. Nehru are two notable examples. Both held charge of five north-eastern states-Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Tripura. BK Nehru’s tenure in the region lasted from 1968 to 1973. Similarly, K.V. Krishna Rao, who previously served as Chief of the Army Staff, held overlapping gubernatorial charges in Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, and Meghalaya from 1984 to 1989. BK Nehru not only served multiple states simultaneously but also held office the maximum number of times. Across his career, he was appointed as a governor eight times across the seven states. He is followed by A.R. Kidwai, who was appointed as a governor six times across the five states between 1979 and 2009. Others who matched this number include Bhishma Narain Singh, C. Rangarajan, ESL Narasimhan, K.V. Raghunatha Reddy, and K.V. Krishna Rao.
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  MM Jacob has the longest single term as a governor

  There is a significant difference in the total number of days served by various governors. An analysis of the longest tenures in our database reveals that MM Jacob holds the record for the longest continuous service as a governor, serving 11.8 years as the governor of Meghalaya. He is followed by Padmaja Naidu, who served as the governor of West Bengal for 10.6 years from 1956 to 1967. Additionally, NN Vohra and PC Alexander served as governors of Jammu and Kashmir and Maharashtra for 10.2 and 9.5 years, respectively, in a single term.
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  What do governors do after demitting office?

  What happens after governors step down? Most retire from public life. Of 843 governors, only 72 took on public or political roles afterwards, and just 14 became MPs. Some exceptions stand out. A.R. Kidwai, after being a governor for six years between 1979 and 1985, was a Rajya Sabha MP and AMU vice-chancellor before returning as Punjab’s governor in 2004. Seven went on to hold top constitutional posts: Shankar Dayal Sharma, Droupadi Murmu, and Zakir Hussain became Presidents; B.D. Jatti, G.S. Pathak, and Jagdeep Dhankhar became Vice Presidents. A few returned to active politics: Baby Rani Maurya is now the Uttar Pradesh state cabinet minister; Tamilisai Soundararajan resigned in 2024 to contest the Lok Sabha polls (and lost); and D.B. Barooah became Congress president and a union minister. Sheila Dixit (who has been Union minister, CM and Governor) also returned to active politics in 2019 to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Delhi.
• Assignments by profession, after governor’s role

  Which chief ministers and governors had the longest working relationships? The longest-serving pair was Bansi Lal, Chief Minister of Haryana (1968-75), and Governor Birendra Nath Chakraborty, who worked together for nearly 7.5 years. Manik Sarkar, Chief Minister of Tripura, served with Governor Dinesh Nandan Sahay from 2003 to 2009. Other notable pairs include Sheila Dikshit with Tejendra Khanna in Delhi and Jyoti Basu with Nurul Hasan in West Bengal, both serving nearly six years together.