New Delhi, Aug. 19: The Centre today appointed two new governors and moved or gave additional responsibilities to five others in a reshuffle that sends out mixed signals about the UPA government’s belief in its own tenure.

The announcement of the reshuffle, pending for more than a year in some instances, was made in the middle of meetings in which Congress troubleshooters sought to save the government from tottering after the Left’s ultimatum on the nuclear deal with the US.

Senior Congress leaders Narayan Dutt Tiwari and Murlidhar Chandrakant Bhandare have been rewarded with governorship in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

Former chief minister Tiwari’s appointment effectively takes him out of Uttarakhand politics. Bhandare, who used to help in the legal cell at the Congress headquarters, is also a senior hand whose counsel was sought by the party leadership.

The reshuffle immediately sparked speculation on whether the Congress was trying to give the impression that it was business as usual.

But the timing of the announcement — on a Sunday afternoon — also betrayed a nervousness and a hurry to clear pending files before the Left pulled out the prop that has held up the Manmohan Singh government.

“This has been on the cards for a long time. It’s a routine development,” a senior government functionary said.

But for Sudarshan Agarwal, all the transfers and new appointments on the list today were of former Congress party loyalists or of former bureaucrats.

Agarwal, currently governor of Uttarakhand, who was appointed during the NDA regime and was known to be in the Advani camp, has been moved to Sikkim.

Nagaland governor K. Sankaranayanan, who has been asked to take additional charge in Arunachal Pradesh, is a senior Congress leader from Kerala.

Shilendra Kumar Singh, a former diplomat, has been moved from Arunachal to Rajasthan. The Rajasthan Raj Bhavan was vacated by Pratibha Patil after she became President.

Singh has been acknowledged for his advice on relations with China and Pakistan. His son, Kanishka, is a friend of Rahul Gandhi.

B.L. Joshi, who is being moved from Meghalaya to Uttarakhand, knew Indira Gandhi since his time in the Congress. He is also well acquainted with the party high command.

Former Union minister Rameshwar Thakur, who will take over as governor in Karnataka, vacates the Orissa Raj Bhavan. He replaces T.N. Chaturvedi, a former bureaucrat appointed when the NDA was in power at the Centre, whose term has ended.