Congress appoints four new Governors

New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday finalised four names for the post of governors of different states. They are BV Wanchoo, who currently heads the Special Protection Group; former Railway Minister CK Jaffer Sharief; former Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker Srinivas Tiwari and Congress General Secretary RK Dhawan who used to be Indira Gandhi's personal secretary. All four are party old-timers and this will be their first stint as Governors.

On Friday, the Congress top brass, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party president Sonia Gandhi, met amid indications that a number of states will be seeing change of Governors in the next few days.

Sources said the issue of Governors' appointment as well as the current political situation came up for discussion. Other members of the Congress Core group, which took up the issues, included Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister P Chidambaram, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna and Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel.

The posts of Governor is vacant in Rajasthan and Kerala while the tenure of existing Governors in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Goa as well as that of Lt Governor of Delhi are coming to an end later this month.

Punjab Governor Shivraj Patil is currently holding the additional charge of Rajasthan.

Although there is no constitutional binding on their tenure, a number of these states are likely to see new faces. The confabulations also took place a day when MPs from UPA ally Trinamool Congress held a meeting with Prime Minister Singh over the issue of financial assistance to West Bengal.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier assured Trinamool Congress that the Centre would do everything possible to bail out debt-ridden West Bengal as party MPs sought a three-year moratorium on interest payment.

A day after they placed their demands before Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee including restructuring of the "massive debt burden" faced by the state, a delegation of Trinamool MPs met the Prime Minister to raise the issue.

Trinamool's support is crucial to the government which seeks easy passage of the Finance Bill in Parliament.