Veteran Kalyan Singh is new Rajasthan governor

Senior BJP leader Kalyan Singh, appointed the Rajasthan governor Tuesday, is a three-time chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who rejoined the party for a second time only months earlier.

The 82-year-old presided over Uttar Pradesh when Hindu mobs razed the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in December 1992.

A committed RSS worker, Kalyan Singh parted ways with the Bharatiya Janata Party following differences with former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Belonging to the backward Lodh caste, he left the BJP for the first time in December 1999 and returned to it in January 2004.

Before the Lok Sabha election of 2009, he again left the BJP and joined forces with the Samajwadi Party. He contested from Etah as an independent and won.

In the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha battle, he buried his differences with then party president Rajnath Singh and returned to the BJP yet again. His son Rajver Singh was given a BJP ticket from Etah.

A few days ago Kalyan Singh told IANS that party president Amit Shah had called him up with the proposal of governorship of Rajasthan.

"I have accepted the post and am happy that I will be going to Rajasthan as governor," he added.