New Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, senior BJP leader, Manoj Sinha is a close confidant, of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Sinha held charge of the Communication Ministry as a Minister of State in 2016. He has also been Minister of State for Railways. The 61-year-old leader is a three-time BJP MP from Ghazipur in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Sinha, a prominent Bhumihar leader in eastern Uttar Pradesh, close to Bihar, had also been a front runner for the post of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister after the Bharatiya Janata Party won the state Assembly elections in 2017.
After 2019 Lok Sabha polls, there was a speculation that he was likely to get a Rajya Sabha seat from UP but his appointment as J&K’s Lt Governor has put all speculations to rest.
Sinha is the fourth politician of Uttar Pradesh appointed as the Constitutional head of the state.
Before him Kalraj Mishra was appointed as Governor of Rajasthan, Phagu Chouhan of Bihar and Baby Rani Maurya of Uttarakhand.
Sinha is IIT-BHU alumnus and has been quite famous as 'Vikas Purush' (the man who focuses on development) among the locals of Ghazipur.
The three-time BJP MP from Ghazipur constituency went for admission in civil engineering at the Banaras Hindu University in the mid-1970s during the emergency era. However, soon after Sinha became an active member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party. By the age of 23, in the year 1982, Sinha stepped into student politics and became the president of BHU.
The Vikas Purush of Ghazipur, however, went on to fight his first Lok Sabha Election in 1998 from Ghazipur constituency and then repeated his win in 1999. The third time when Manoj Sinha won from Ghazipur Lok Sabha constituency was in the year 2014.After which Sinha was appointed as a cabinet minister as well. He was named as the star campaigner of the BJP during the 2017 State Assembly Polls.
The clean image and honesty of Manoj Sinha have always kept him out of any kind of controversy. The civil engineer from BHU is also known for his massive connect with the masses from rural regions.