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Kerala governor Khan to now be governor of Bihar

By, Kochi
Dec 25, 2024 07:42 AM IST

The 73-yr-old governor, who took charge as the Kerala governor on September 6, 2019 and completed a five-year-term, had a testy relationship with the LDF govts during his tenure

President of India Droupadi Murmu on Tuesday appointed Kerala governor Arif Mohammed Khan as the new governor of Bihar, a release from the Rashtrapati Bhavan said.

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan was appointed the new Bihar Governor. (PTI)
Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan was appointed the new Bihar Governor. (PTI)

Outgoing Bihar governor Rajendra Arlekar will replace Khan in the Raj Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram, it said.

73-year-old Khan, who took charge as the Kerala governor on September 6, 2019 and completed a five-year-term, had a testy relationship with the successive LDF governments during his tenure on a host of issues including university staff appointments, actions of the CPM student wing SFI and bills passed by the state assembly.

Khan had a run-in with historian Irfan Habib at the Indian History Congress in Kannur in 2019 wherein he called the latter a “goonda” and accused him of trying to physically assault him. During the event, which came in the backdrop of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, Khan accused then private secretary to chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan KK Ragesh of preventing the police from arresting those who heckled him on the stage in 2019.

The governor, at a two-hour-long press conference in 2022, also alleged that the chief minister’s office pressurised him to appoint Gopinath Ravindran as the vice-chancellor of Kannur University, and interfered in his discretionary powers as the Chancellor. Ravindran’s appointment was later quashed by the Supreme Court in 2023 and the Governor came in for criticism from the top court.

The Vijayan government since 2021 has approached the Supreme Court complaining that governor Khan was sitting on bills passed by the assembly including on university appointments, amendments to Abkari Act, Land Assignment and Co-operative Societies. The governor in April this year passed five bills, including some that he had denied assent for over two years, after the top court observed that neither reason nor justification was given by governor to keep the bills pending.

The governor, throughout his tenure, also had frequent run-ins with the SFI, student wing of CPM, often stepping out of his motorcade to confront its activists on the road. While the SFI accused him of delaying assent on bills and stacking Sangh Parivar nominees as university senate members, the governor claimed the student outfit was unleashing violence on campuses and threatening to endanger his life.

In January this year, Khan made the shortest policy address in the history of the Kerala assembly, reading only the first and last paras and concluding his speech in less than two minutes. Khan’s decision to not read the policy address in its entirety amid his confrontation with the state government had made headlines.

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