Satya Pal Malik: in and out of Raj Bhavan, never far from controversy

• As Bihar Governor, a post he took over in 2017, Malik accused all politicians in the state of owning BEd colleges.

• Malik was the Governor of J&K when, in November 2018, while dissolving the Assembly, Malik said that had he looked to Delhi (or, the Modi government), he would have had to install a minority government led by Sajad Lone, and history would have remembered him as a “dishonest man”.

Addressing a gathering at a Gwalior university, he added: “So I ended the matter once and for all. Those who abuse me will continue to do so, but I am convinced I did the right thing.”

• On January 7, 2019, months before he oversaw the scrapping of J&K’s special status as its governor, Malik claimed all was well in the state. “The number of murders witnessed in Patna in a single day is equal to deaths in Kashmir in a week.” Bihar was then ruled by the BJP-JD(U) combine.

• In July 2019, addressing an event in Jammu, Malik called on militants to kill the corrupt. “The boys with guns are unnecessarily killing unarmed people… Kill those who have looted the wealth of your country and your Kashmir” he said.

• Two months after J&K became a Union territory, with Ladakh carved out of it, Malik was moved as Governor of Goa.

Then, in March 2020, at a public meeting in Baghpat, Western UP, he said governors of Kashmir largely just drank and played golf. “The Governor has no work,” he said.

• Later the same month, speaking in Goa, he said that a day before Article 370 was abrogated, he had got a call from the then Chief Secretary saying that more than 1,000 people might get killed if J&K’s special status was scrapped.

• By July that year, he had begun speaking against the BJP government led by Pramod Sawant in Goa, and criticised it over its handling of the Covid pandemic. By August 2020, Malik had been moved out as Meghalaya Governor.

• In October 2021, in an interview to India Today TV, Malik alleged that the Sawant government had kept him in the dark on the outbreak, and that he had to rely on Raj Bhavan employees travelling from containment zones.

• He also alleged large scale corruption in the Sawant government, and said he was moved as Governor for calling this out. “I am a Lohiaite, I have spent time with Charan Singh, I can’t tolerate corruption,” he said, adding that he had informed Prime Minister Narendra Modi about an alleged scam involving door-to-door distribution of rations.

•While he was Meghalaya Governor, amid reports of militants targeting civilians in Kashmir, Malik said this never happened in his time, and went on to accuse an RSS functionary of corruption in J&K.

“Two files came before me in Jammu and Kashmir. One of them pertained to Ambani and another to a senior RSS functionary. One of the Secretaries told me these are fraud files, but he also said you can get Rs 150 crore each in the two deals. I rejected the offer saying, ‘I have come with five kurtas and I will leave just with them’,” Malik said.

• The speech created a massive controversy, and taking cognisance, J&K LG Manoj Sinha ordered a CBI enquiry into it. The CBI subsequently registered two FIRs, and has conducted multiple searches and questioned several people, including Malik, in the matter.

• By February 2021, Malik was openly criticising the Centre. That month, in an interview to The Indian Express, Malik spoke out against the government handling of protests over three contentious farm laws that had been on since November 2020.

“The farmers cannot be sent back insulted. You cannot humiliate them and send them back from the protests. You should engage them in a conversation,” Malik said.

• A month later, Malik raised the issue publicly at a gathering in Baghpat, suggesting that there could be a backlash like that by the Sikhs over Operation Blue Star.

• In November 2021, addressing a ‘Global Jat Summit’ in Jaipur, Malik said, “The country has never seen such a huge protest where 600 people have been martyred. Even if an animal dies, a condolence message is issued by Delhi leaders. But no prastav (motion) is passed over [the deaths of] 600 farmers.”

• In January 2022, Malik attacked the PM in a speech at Dadri in western UP over farmers’ protests. “When I went to meet the Prime Minister to discuss the farmer issue, I ended up fighting with him within five minutes. He was very arrogant. When I told him that 500 of our own (farmers) had died… he said, ‘Did they die for me?’,” he was heard saying in a video clip from the function.

• In September 2022, The Tribune reported him as telling a social gathering in Rohtak that Modi was “like gold” when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, but had changed after he came to Delhi.

• In October 2022, his tenure as Meghalaya Governor over, Malik addressed a gathering in Bulandshahr in UP where he criticised the Agnipath scheme for recruitment into armed forces. According to an IANS report, Malik said the government was playing with the lives of youth.