NEW DELHI: President Droupadi Murmu on Monday appointed governors for six states, naming Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar as the full-time governor of Tamil Nadu, transferring Om Prakash Mathur from Sikkim to Kerala and appointing Sudha Yadav as Governor of Karnataka, a Rashtrapati Bhavan communiqué said.
Braj Mohan Ram has been appointed Governor of Odisha, Dhal Singh Bisen will be posted in Uttarakhand, and Dushyant Gautam will be the Sikkim Governor. The appointments will take effect from the dates on which the appointees assume charge of their respective offices, the communiqué said.
Arlekar, who was serving as Governor of Kerala, had been discharging the functions of Tamil Nadu Governor since March, following R N Ravi’s appointment as Governor of West Bengal. The latest order formalises his appointment to the post.
A former Speaker of the Goa Legislative Assembly, Arlekar has also served as Governor of Himachal Pradesh and Bihar. He became Governor of Himachal Pradesh in July 2021 and assumed charge as Bihar Governor in February 2023.
During his tenure as Goa Assembly Speaker from 2012 to 2017, the House became the first state legislature in the country to adopt a paperless system. He also served as Goa’s Minister for Forest and Environment and Panchayati Raj.
Mathur, a veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan, succeeds Arlekar in Kerala. He assumed office as Governor of Sikkim in July 2024.
Mathur has held several organisational positions in the BJP, including national vice-president and general secretary, and served two terms in the Rajya Sabha from 2008 to 2022. He was also associated with the party’s election management in several crucial states.
Ram, a former Lok Sabha member from Palamu, succeeds Hari Babu Kambhampati as Odisha Governor. Kambhampati took charge in January 2025.
Sudha Yadav, a former BJP MP from Mahendragarh, Haryana, and a member of the National Commission for Backward Classes, succeeds Thaawarchand Gehlot as Karnataka Governor.
She entered electoral politics after her husband’s martyrdom, when Narendra Modi, who was then in charge of the BJP in Haryana, proposed her candidature from Mahendragarh despite her having never considered contesting an election. She won the Lok Sabha seat by a margin of 1.39 lakh votes against Rao Inderjit Singh.
In 2015, Yadav was appointed national in-charge of the BJP’s OBC Morcha. She served on the National Commission for Backward Classes from 2019 to 2022 and, on August 17, 2022, joined the BJP Parliamentary Board, the party’s top decision-making body.
She was the second woman to serve on the board after Sushma Swaraj. Bisen, a former Lok Sabha MP from Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh, succeeds Lieutenant General (retired) Gurmit Singh as Uttarakhand Governor.