Kiran Bedi appointed new lieutenant governor of Puducherry

On Sunday, the President of India Pranab Mukherjee appointed former cop Kiran Bedi as the lieutenant governor of Puducherry, reported The Hindu. She will take charge from the retired LG Ajay Kumar Singh. [caption id=“attachment_2793558” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A file photo of Kiran Bedi. PTI[/caption] A Rashtrapati Bhawan communique said “the President has been pleased to appoint Ms Kiran Bedi, to be the Lt. Governor of Puducherry with effect from the date she assumes charges of her office.” “I look forward to giving every bit of myself to the responsibility. I am there for the benefit of the country. I am here to give my best every day, each day. I am grateful for the government’s decision. They trusted me,” said Bedi. The 66-year-old was last in the news when she was contesting the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections on a BJP ticket. She was a high profile chief ministerial candidate in those elections, but she lost from the Krishna Nagar constituency . On Sunday, in an interview with NDTV, she professed her love for the administrative services and claimed she would make a very good lieutenant governor in Puducherry. She said, “This is going to give me plenty of work. I am so much at home. I love serving. Puducherry is a UT and in my days as an IPS officer, I was part of the UT cadre. But I never got a chance to serve there.” Bedi joined the administrative services in 1972 and become the first female IPS officer in India. She has held various other posts such as deputy director general (narcotics) in the Narcotics Control Bureau, inspector general prisons of Tihar and deputy commissioner of Police West and North Delhi. In the Puducherry Assembly Elections which concluded on Thursday, Congress won 15 seats and its ally DMK won two. AINRC won eight seats and AIADMK won four seats. With inputs from PTI