Kerala Governor Sheila Dikshit resigns

NEW DELHI: Sheila Dikshit has resigned as Kerala Governor becoming the eighth governor appointed by the UPA regime to quit since the NDA government came to power in May this year.

76-year-old Dikshit today said she submitted her resignation to President Pranab Mukherjee soon after she met him and also Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh yesterday.

The President's Secretariat has sent her resignation to the Union Home Ministry for necessary action, official sources said.

"I have resigned, I did it yesterday and I don't want to comment further," Dikshit, a former Delhi Chief Minister, said.

Dikshit said she will speak on the issue only after she gets an official word on the acceptance of the resignation.

With this, Dikshit becomes the eighth Governor to have resigned since the Narendra Modi government came to power on May 26.

Six UPA-appointed Governors — K Sankaranarayanan (Maharashtra), M K Narayanan (West Bengal), Ashwani Kumar (Nagaland), B L Joshi (UP), B V Wanchoo (Goa) and Shekhar Dutt (Chhattisgarh), have already resigned after being nudged by the NDA government.

V Purushothaman, the Governor of Mizoram, had resigned after he was transferred to Nagaland in July this year.

Dikshit, who served as Delhi Chief Minister from 1998 to 2013, was appointed Kerala governor in March just before the model code of conduct came into force for the Lok Sabha polls.

There were indications that Dikshit may be next in line to be transferred to Mizoram, a state where Sankarnarayanan and Kamla Beniwal were shunted out to

87-year-old Beniwal, who had a running battle with a running battle with then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi when she was governor of the state, took charge as Mizoram Governor but was sacked after a month by the NDA government.