Ravindra Narayan Ravi was on Saturday sworn-in as the Governor of Tamil Nadu, succeeding Banwarilal Purohit who has since been shifted to Punjab. Ravi, shifted from Nagaland, said he saw his new role more as an opportunity than a challenge.
Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, Sanjib Banerjee administered the oath of office to Ravi at an official ceremony held at the Raj Bhavan here. Chief Minister M K Stalin, his cabinet colleagues, Leader of Opposition K Palaniswami and others participated at the swearing-in.
He is the 26th Governor of the state. President Ram Nath Kovind had last week appointed Ravi, a former IPS officer, as the governor of the state.
He was appointed as the Centre’s Interlocutor for the Naga peace talks on August 29, 2014, a responsibility he continues to discharge. After the swearing-in, Stalin introduced state Assembly Speaker M Appavu and his cabinet colleagues to Ravi.
Later, addressing media persons, the Governor said he saw his new role more as an opportunity than a challenge. “I think more than a challenge, it is an opportunity and I think it will be helpful for me,” he said in response to a query.
Asked if his stint in the Intelligence Bureau (IB) will serve in discharging the duty of a governor, Ravi replied, “the slate of our (his and the state government) relationship is absolutely new and clean. My effort will be to make it as beautiful as possible in the days to come.” Dismissing as ‘premature’ to comment on the four-month-old DMK government’s performance in the state, Ravi said he would be able to know more about it as the days go by. “I think it is too premature for me to say but I believe that it should be doing well, the way it has handled Covid-19 which has come down. I think so,” he replied.
On whether he would carry out review meetings with officials as his predecessor had done, which the then opposition DMK among others had protested against, Ravi shot back saying, “look I have been sworn in some minutes ago. Plans will unfold as the time comes…one thing I know is that this state has a popular government mandated by the people and governance is the responsibility of the government. Governor is to function within the parameters of the constitution. And I will try my best to keep that in mind.”
Born at Patna in Bihar, Ravi, who did his Masters in Physics in 1974, joined the Indian Police Service in 1976 after a brief stint in journalism. He served in Kerala in various capacities for over a decade and then in different parts of the country in various capacities and was also deputed with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). While in the IB, he served largely in theatres of endemic violence including in Jammu and Kashmir and the North East. He also specialised in the dynamics of human migration in South Asia and worked extensively on the political sociology of border population. After retirement from government service in 2012, he regularly wrote columns in national dailies. He was appointed as Chairman, Joint Intelligence Committee in the Prime Minister’s Office. He was appointed as Deputy National Security Advisor in October 2018 and served as the Governor of Nagaland from August 1, 2019 to September 15, 2021.
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