SHILLONG: The Meghalaya Governor, “Shillong boy” Tathagata Roy, is going to bid adieu to his place of birth on Wednesday, as his successor Satya Pal Malik who was suddenly transferred from Goa on Monday following some political controversies in the coastal state, is scheduled to take over the reins on Thursday.
Septuagenarian Roy whose loyalty to the BJP and RSS is non-negotiable, will be heading for Delhi for garnering support for fulfilling his ambition to providing leadership to the Party in West Bengal.
Speaking exclusively to this correspondent here on Monday he said, “Let’s see if the party envisages any role for me in Bengal. I would love to work at strengthening the party in my state and at giving it a new vision and direction. Too many BJP workers have been murdered in Bengal and no one is arrested for the crimes. It’s a free for all. This has got to stop,” he said.
The outgoing Governor wanted a little more time to be able to pack at leisure and spoke to his successor Satya Pal Malik and quoted him (Malik) saying that he would not be coming immediately due to health reasons but a missive from the PMO instructed that he should come to Shillong immediately and be sworn in on Thursday.
“And when an order comes from PMO there can be no arguments,” Roy said.
Roy will be remembered for some of his controversial tweets for which there was an angry demand for him to leave Meghalaya.
His tenure saw the first-ever protest demonstration outside Raj Bhavan. He was sent on leave amidst controversial situation and Amit Shah cautioned him against making provocative tweets. Since then he stopped tweeting on any issue in Meghalaya.
“I prefer to take up issues with the state government rather than tweet about them,” he said somewhat cautiously.
Meanwhile Meghalaya’s new Governor Satya Pal Malik is the first career politician who was appointed Governor of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2018. In his political career, Malik has been with different political parties including the Congress and joined the BJP in 2004. He was appointed Governor of Bihar in 2017 before being appointed Governor of Jammu & Kashmir.
He will be remembered for imposing President’s Rule in Jammu & Kashmir and the final break-up of the state into two Union Territories — Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. One message that he sent to the bureaucracy on joining as J&K Governor was, “Corruption, inefficiency and sluggishness will not be tolerated as I am going to be very harsh with such people.”
He initiated many development projects in J&K and quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi who he said had told him to give the people of the state a ‘badhiya Kashmir’.
Malik says, “Acting on these directions, I created a Corporation immediately after taking over. It borrowed Rs 8,000 crore from banks for (completing) all the pending projects within one year.”
With his taking over as Governor of Meghalaya, he is being shifted for the third time in two years. He was appointed Governor of Goa in October 2019 and in less than a year’s time is being shifted to Meghalaya.