Goa Governor Wanchoo resigns

B V Wanchoo on Friday resigned as Governor of Goa as government went about finalising its plans for replacing the Governors appointed during the previous UPA regime.

Wanchoo, 63, sent his resignation after he received a call from Union Home Secretary Anil Goswami on Friday morning asking him to resign, official sources said.

The resignation of Wanchoo, a former chief of elite Special Protection Group, will be sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for acceptance.

A 1976-batch IPS officer, Wanchoo's resignation came a few days after former National Security Advisor M K Narayanan quit from Governorship of West Bengal.

Wanchoo was quizzed by CBI as a witness in connection with AgustaWestland deal bribery scandal as was Narayanan just before his resignation.

Besides Wanchoo and Narayanan, three Governors have already resigned and they are B L Joshi (Uttar Pradesh), Shekhar Dutt (Chhattisgarh) and Ashwani Kumar (Nagaland) following a nudge from the NDA government.

Two Governors H R Bhardwaj (Karnataka) and Devanand Konwar retired late last month.

However, a few other Governors appointed by the previous UPA regime continue to remain in office. They include K Sankaranarayanan (Maharashtra), Sheila Dikshit (Kerala), Jaganath Pahadia (Haryana), Kamala Beniwal (Gujarat), Shivraj V Patil (Punjab), besides some others.

The sources said the government was considering appointing some BJP veterans as Governors.

The names doing the round include those of former UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, former UP Assembly Speaker Kesari Nath Tripathi, former Union Minister Ram Naik, former Lucknow MP Lalji Tandon, former Bhopal MP Kailash Joshi, BJP leader from Kerala O Rajagopal besides others.