A day after V Shanmuganathan decided to step down as Governor of Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh after he allegedly molested a job aspirant and turned the governor house into “a club of young ladies”, the current Assam Governor, Banwarilal Purohit has been given the additional charge of Meghalaya.
Here are a few things you should know about Banwarilal:
- Purohit was elected in the Maharashtra Assembly as a member of Congress in 1979 and 1980, after which the party sent him to the Lok Sabha.
- In 1984, he was elected to the 8th Lok Sabha as Congress MP and was re-elected in 1989 on the same ticket. However, he was expelled from the Congress after he took part in Kar Seva in Ayodhya.
- He joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1991 after the party launched its movement to build a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, and contested Lok Sabha elections in 1991 as the party’s candidate. However, he lost to Congress’ Datta Meghe.
- The current governor is also the Managing Editor of The Hitavada, an English daily which was founded by Gopal Krishna Gokhale in 1911.
- The former MP is a very known name in the Marwari community in Vidarbha and also heads the Shri Ramdeobaba Sarvajanik Samiti which takes care of various social, religious and educational programmes.
