Former union minister and senior BJP leader from Uttar Pradesh, Manoj Sinha, was on Thursday appointed as Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir.

This comes after former LG Girish Chandra Murmu abruptly resigned on Wednesday.

A communique issued by the President’s secretariat said that the resignation of GC Murmu as Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir has been accepted.

It further said that “the President has been pleased to appoint Shri Manoj Sinha, to be the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir with effect from the date he assumes charge of his office” in place of Murmu.

The 61-year-old Sinha was born on July 1, 1959 in Mohanpura of Ghazipur district of eastern UP and has been actively involved in working for the backward villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh.

His political career started when he was elected the president of Banaras Hindu University Students Union in 1982. He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1996 and repeated the term in 1999.

Manoj Sinha has been a member of the BJP national council from 1989 to 1996. He was elected to the Lower House for a third term in national politics when the BJP swept the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.

He was former Minister of State for Railways and later held an independent charge of Ministry of Communication.

Meanwhile, the resignation of Murmu comes as a surprise as he resigned from the post exactly a year after the abrogation of Article 370, that granted special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The move comes barely nine months after he took over the reins of the newly created Union Territory.

The 60-year-old former IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre was on October 25 last year appointed as the first Lt Governor of the Union Territory after the state of Jammu and Kashmir was downgraded and split into two UTs, the other one being Ladakh.

He had replaced with Governor Satya Pal Malik who was transferred to and appointed as Governor of Goa.

Meanwhile, there was no official word on the reasons for the resignation of Murmu, a 1985-batch IAS officer, who has served as Principal Secretary to Narendra Modi during his tenure as Gujarat Chief Minister.

However, according to a report in IANS, Murmu has been appointed as the new Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, replacing Rajiv Mehrishi, a 1978 batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre.