Satya Pal Malik sworn-in as Governor of Jammu & Kashmir

New Delhi, Aug 23: Satya Pal Malik, took oath on Thursday as the 13th Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, ending the five-decade-long practice of retired bureaucrats being appointed to the post.

On Tuesday, Malik was shifted to J&K as the new Governor of the state. He arrived in Srinagar in a chartered plane on Wednesday. Outgoing Governor N N Vohra, who was at the helm of affairs for the last 10 years, called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a courtesy visit.

Malik's transfer to the state comes after the withdrawal of support by the BJP to the PDP government headed by Mehbooba Mufti a few months ago.

Malik (72) has the experience of working with almost all political hues of the country, and will be the first career politician to assume the position after Karan Singh, who held the office from 1965 to 1967.

He is a career politician who started as a student leader in Meerut University and became an MLA of Charan Singh's Bhartiya Kranti Dal from Baghpat, in Uttar Pradesh, in 1974.

He had joined the Congress in 1984, and became a Rajya Sabha MP, but resigned three years later against the backdrop of the Bofors scam. He switched to the V P Singh-led Janta Dal in 1988 and became an MP from Aligarh in 1989.

In 2004, Malik joined the BJP and unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections, losing to former prime minister Charan Singh's son Ajit Singh.