President Ram Nath Kovind on Sunday appointed new governors in the states of Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Telangana and Rajasthan.

Tamilisai Soundararajan, the Tamil Nadu state chief of the Bharatiya Janata Party, will be the governor of Telangana. The governor’s post in Kerala will be held by Arif Mohammad Khan, who famously quit from the Union Cabinet and the Congress in 1986 when the Rajiv Gandhi government used the Parliament to set aside the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Shah Bano case. He replaces P Sathasivam, the former Chief Justice of India whose five-year term has ended.

Uttarakhand BJP chief Bhagat Singh Koshyari was appointed the governor of Maharashtra, and former Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya will be the governor of Himachal Pradesh. Kalraj Mishra was transferred from Himachal Pradesh to Rajasthan.

The appointments will take effect from the dates the governor-designates assume charge of their respective offices, a statement from the President’s office said.

Soundararajan was appointed the Tamil Nadu chief of the BJP in 2014. She had lost the Lok Sabha elections this year to Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam candidate Kanimozhi in Thoothukudi. Dattatreya was a Union minister in the previous Narendra Modi government.

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