Senior IAS officer Girish Chander Murmu, who is currently the expenditure secretary, was appointed the first Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir on October 25, six days ahead of the state becoming a Union Territory.

Murmu, 59, an IAS officer of the 1985 batch, worked as Narendra Modi’s additional principal secretary during his tenure as Gujarat chief minister. He was due for retirement on November 30.

He will be administered the oath of office on October 31 in Srinagar after which he will be the administrative head of Kashmir and Jammu provinces. The state’s third province - Ladakh - has been carved out as a separate Union Territory.

Former defence secretary R.K. Mathur has been appointed the first Lt Governor of strategically located Ladakh. The 65-year-old bureaucrat, belonging to the 1977 IAS batch, retired as chief information commissioner last year. He will be administered the oath of office on October 31 in Leh.

The two Union Territories - Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir - will come into existence on October 31 after the Centre abrogated the special status of the state and bifurcated it into Union Territories on August 5.

Incumbent governor Satya Pal Malik will move to Goa for the remainder of his tenure. He was first appointed governor of Bihar in September 2017 and later shifted to Jammu and Kashmir in August 2018.

Malik succeeds Mridula Sinha, who completed her five-year tenure in August but continued to hold the post till October 23.

BJP’s Kerala president P.S. Sreedharan Pillai has been appointed as the new governor of Mizoram, the Rashtrapati Bhawan statement said. Assam governor Jagdish Mukhi has been holding the additional charge of Mizoram.

In another order, former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief and Union government appointed interlocutor to Jammu and Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, has been appointed as administrator to Lakshadweep. An order to this effect was issued by the home ministry.

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