"The President has accepted the resignation of Girish Chandra Murmu as Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. The President has been pleased to appoint Shri Manoj Sinha, to be the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir with effect from the date he assumes charge of his office, vice Girish Chandra Murmu " a Rashtrapati Bhavan communique said.
Who is Manoj Sinha?
For those uninitiated, Manoj Sinha has enjoyed a very distinguished political career, not to mention that he has a B.Tech And M.Tech degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi.
He started his political career as the student's union president in BHU in 1982 and in 1996 he was elected to Lok Sabha from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh. He repeated the feat in 1999, and for the last time in 2014 Lok Sabha elections when a Narendra Modi-led BJP came to power with a thumping majority.
He held the position of Minister of State (MoS), Railways and in July 2016, during the second cabinet reshuffle, he was also made Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Communications Ministry.
Sinha has been among the best performing members of Parliament and in the 13th Lok Sabha he was praised for a very high attendance and for asking several questions pertaining to various topics of public interests.
He became a member of the BJP national council in 1989 and he stayed there till 1996.
Sinha was a also member of the General Council, School of Planning during 1999–2000, and a member of the committee on Energy and member of the committee on Government Assurances.
After BJP's victory in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Sinha's name was considered for the post of Chief Minister, but eventually lost out to Yogi Adityanath.