4 min readMumbaiFeb 12, 2023 10:21 AM IST
First published on: Feb 12, 2023 at 10:21 AM IST
Ramesh Bais was appointed the new Governor of Maharashtra after President Droupadi Murmu accepted the resignation of Bhagat Singh Koshyari on Sunday morning.
This was part of a string of constitutional appointments made by the President on Sunday. BJP leaders Lakshman Prasad Acharya, C P Radhakrishnan, Shiv Pratap Shukla and Gulab Chand Kataria, who is also the Leader of Opposition in Rajasthan, were nominated as Governors in Sikkim, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Assam respectively. Retired Supreme Court judge Nazeer was appointed governor of Andhra Pradesh and Lt Gen K T Parnaik (retd) governor of Arunachal Pradesh.
Who is Ramesh Bais?
Bais was earlier the Governor of Jharkhand. He started his political journey as a councillor in the Raipur Municipal Corporation in 1980 and went on to win the Raipur Lok Sabha constituency seven times for the BJP, earning a reputation as a giantkiller, apart from holding several important posts in the party, before he was picked for the gubernatorial job in Tripura in 2019.
Bais moved into the Raj Bhavan in Ranchi in July 2021.
Among the leaders he had defeated during his political journey as a legislator include Congress bigwig V C Shukla, and current Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel. In Bais’s first poll loss in Raipur after 1989, Shukla had defeated him in 1991 by a meagre 900 votes. However, Bais had challenged the verdict before the High Court — and won.
Bais also served as the party’s MP unit vice-president, and as Minister of State in the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to whom he was close.
He had also made a place for himself in the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah dispensation by siding with Modi when he was still testing the waters for his prime ministerial bid. Bais had surprised everyone because he was seen closer to L K Advani.
He moved into the Raj Bhavan in Ranchi in July 2021, after the BJP lost Jharkhand in one of its rare defeats since 2014, especially in a state ruled by it. He replaced Droupadi Murmu — who recently took over as the first tribal President of the country — after she had pushed back on some legislation passed by the previous BJP government that was seen as anti-tribal.
One of his first points of conflict with the Hemant Soren government was over the 2021 notification framing new rules for the Tribes Advisory Council (TAC), a body under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, after the power to constitute the committee was transferred from the Office of the Governor to the Office of the Chief Minister.
In 2022, Bais returned the Prevention of Mob Violence and Mob Lynching Bill, 2021, with two objections: one on the mismatch in Hindi and English versions of the legislation, and another on the definition of ‘mob’.
Then came the controversy involving Soren allotting a mine to a family company, which could now lead to his disqualification from the House. It was the BJP’s letter to Bais over this, that led the Governor to seek the EC’s opinion on the matter.
Even as the above row played out, Bains asked police to put out names of those involved in the violence in Ranchi in protests over BJP leader (since suspended) Nupur Sharma’s remarks against Prophet Mohammed.
Ramesh Bais was previously the Governor of Jharkhand. (Express Archives) 
Share
