Goa Governor Satya Pal Malik has been transferred to Meghalaya and would relieve Tathagata Roy, who has completed his five-year tenure, said a statement released by Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Bhagat Singh Koshyari, the Governor of Maharashtra, will take the additional responsibilities of Goa from now on.
Malik was the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir between August 2018 and October 2019, when the Centre abrogated Article 370. He took charge as the governor of Goa from October after the state of Jammu and Kashmir was divided into two separate Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
He was the first career politician who was appointed as the governor of Jammu and Kashmir in 51 years after Karan Singh.
As the governor of Jammu and Kashmir, he had courted controversy by saying that he did not receive any letter from PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti staking claim to form the government with National Conference in the state after the fall of the BJP-PDP government in 2018. He had said that the Raj Bhawan’s fax machine was not working that day.
Malik earlier, this month, had rejected the Goa government’s plan for a new Raj Bhavan and had called it an “irrational and imprudent” decision when the state was reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic.