Incidentally, Nagpur Today had flashed a report predicting Purohit could be made Governor in view of nomination of Dr Vikas Mahatme to Rajya Sabha ignoring a stalwart like Purohit.
Nagpur: Former Member of Parliament and Managing Editor of The Hitavada newspaper Banwarilal Purohit has been appointed Governor of Assam. He replaces Padmanabha Balakrishna Acharya.
Apart from Purohit, the Narendra Modi-led BJP Government on Wednesday appointed Najma A Heptulla, who last month resigned from the Union Cabinet, as Governor of Manipur replacing V Shanmuganthan. Punjab Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki has been replaced by V P Singh Badnore whereas, Jagdish Mukhi has been appointed as the Lieutenant Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a communiqué from Rashtrapati Bhavan said.
Incidentally, Purohit is the third person from Nagpur to be appointed Governor. Earlier, Rajani Rai was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Pondicherry and R S Gavai, a top RPI leader, was made Governor of Bihar as well as Kerala.
Considered as close to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Banwarilal Purohit was a Member of Parliament from the Nagpur (Lok Sabha constituency) three times, twice as a Congress member, once as a BJP member. In 1984, he was elected to the 8th Lok Sabha as member of Congress Party. He was re-elected in 1989 again on Congress ticket. Purohit opened the account of BJP in the RSS fortress in 1996 Lok Sabha election. In 2009, he again contested on BJP’s ticket but lost the election to Vilas Muttemwar of Congress.
Banwarilal Purohit is also Chairman of Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Director of city unit of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
It is pertinent to recall, Nagpur Today had flashed a report soon after Dr Vikas Mahatme was nominated as Rajya Sabha member ignoring Banwarilal Purohit and other stalwarts. The report titled “Injustice to stalwarts like Purohit-Meghe-Tiwari in R.S. seat allocation?” wherein it was stated “There was a lot of buzz in Nagpur around who was going to be nominated for Rajya Sabha from among Nagpur politicians. Specially after Congress had played its hand and substituted Darda with Chidambaram.
Now it appears that BJP has replicated the Congress move. When speculation was rife about whether Gadkari would favour his ‘close friend’ Vijay Darda and send him back to R.S. a complete non-political person, an eye specialist Dr. Mahatme has been nominated by the BJP ignoring senior Nagpur stalwarts like Banwarilal Purohit, Tiwari and Datta Meghe.
It is believed that there are two distinct BJP camps in Nagpur – Fadnavis and Gadkari. All other party politicians clearly belong to one camp or the other. Tiwari is an exception who keeps equidistance from both. All eyes were on which camp would succeed in sending a senior to R.S. If Devendra would succeed and Purohit would go or would it be Meghe… or Darda. If not a R.S. seat there were hopeful of getting Governorship of some state at least. And….
