IANS/Mumbai
Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan resigned yesterday hours after he was abruptly transferred to Mizoram.
“I have sent my resignation to President Pranab Mukherjee,” Sankaranarayanan said here.
Justifying his decision, the 82-year-old Congress leader said he had “respected the Constitution” by submitting his resignation.
“During my tenure here as governor, and even earlier in Jharkhand and Nagaland, I never brought politics into my functioning,” he said.
In a veiled criticism of the central government’s decision to transfer him to Mizoram, Sankaranarayanan said: “No government is permanent, no individuals are permanent and they have to change some time.”
Sankaranarayanan, who was re-appointed Maharashtra governor in 2012, thanked the people of the state for their love and support during his tenure.
He added that from today, he would work only as a Congressman.
“From tomorrow, I shall have no restrictions, I can do whatever I want, go wherever I want and speak on any topic,” he said in a cheerful and relaxed mood.
A Congress veteran from Kerala, Sankaranarayanan, who was appointed Maharashtra governor in 2010, was re-appointed for a second term in 2012. Earlier, he served stints in Jharkhand and Nagaland for three years.
Gujarat Governor Om Prakash Kohli who has been given additional charge of Maharashtra arrived here in the evening to be sworn in. The Congress criticised the government’s decision.
“This government chooses to exercise power in an extremely arbitrary manner. It is like deja vu. (Gujarat governor) Kamla Beniwal was transferred to Mizoram and after that, she saw it on television that she was dismissed as the governor of Mizoram. Authoritarianism is really the DNA of the government,” Congress leader Manish Tewari said.
Beniwal was sacked on August 6 on charges of misusing office.
Tewari also alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government was going against the constitutional bench judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in 2004.
Sankaranarayanan’s transfer order came barely three days after Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and other members of the ruling Congress-Nationalist Congress Party coalition boycotted functions attended by the prime minister in Nagpur.
The state’s top political brass skipped the official functions ostensibly to protest against the heckling of non-BJP chief ministers in the recent past by party activists.
The booing was witnessed in Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand - coincidentally all at central functions attended by Modi.
Sankaranarayanan, among a dozen governors appointed by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, was already high on the hit list after the BJP-ledNational Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power.
