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Former governor of four states, Satyapal Malik, who took on the Narendra Modi government in his later years, has passed away. He was 79.
Malik’s death was announced by associates through his own X account today, August 5.
Malik has been governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Goa and Meghalaya.
In April of 2023, in an explosive interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Malik had minced no words while speaking on the Pulwama attack and prime minister Narendra Modi’s direction to him to “keep mum” on the security lapse that led to the death of 40 CRPF soldiers in 2019.
Mallik had also been vocal with his support for the farmers’ protest.
Official government websites had it that Mallik entered politics in 1965-66, inspired by the socialist ideology of Rammanohar Lohia.
In 1975, he was appointed the All-India General Secretary of the newly formed ‘Lok Dal’, and in five years, was nominated as the Member of the Rajya Sabha from the Lok Dal.
In 1984, Mallik became a Member of the Congress. In 1986, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha. A year later, he resigned from the party and his parliament membership over the Bofors scam and formed a political party, the Jan Morcha, which was merged with the Janata Dal in 1988.
In 1989, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Aligarh, on a Janata Dal ticket. In 2004, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and contested the Baghpat Lok Sabha seat. He rose through the BJP ranks, occupying key posts, including that of the all-India incharge of the Kisan Morcha of the BJP.
He was appointed Bihar governor in 2017, Jammu and Kashmir governor in 2018, Goa governor in 2019 and was governor of Meghalaya from 2020 to 2022.