Patna: Bihar has got a new governor in less than a year with 83-year-old senior BJP leader Lal Ji Tandon, known to have been mentored by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, replacing incumbent Satya Pal Malik, who has been transferred to the Jammu and Kashmir Raj Bhavan.

Malik had of late become active on the political and administrative circuit and had cracked down on unilateral functioning of BEd institutes, streamlining their admission procedure and monitoring their fee structure to keep it within the reach of common people.

Malik had also written a letter to the chief justice of Patna High Court, chief minister Nitish Kumar, and Union home minister Rajnath Singh, expressing concern in the aftermath of the Muzaffarpur Balika Grih case in which at least 34 minor inmates were alleged to have been raped and tortured.

The letters, sources said, had not gone down well with the political dispensation in Patna.

Tandon, who was at his residence in Lucknow, expressed happiness over being entrusted with the responsibility of Bihar.

"The Prime Minister has imposed trust in me. I will try to make a contribution to the development of Bihar. I will play the role of a guardian to the state government," Tandon told reporters in Lucknow.

He described Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar as an "old friend", and added: "I don't think we will have any problem between us."

Tandon had run into a controversy when as election manager of Vajpayee in the then Prime Minister's Lok Sabha constituency of Lucknow, 21 women died in a stampede on April 12, 2004.

The stampede broke out at the Chandrasekhar Azad Park in Lucknow during distribution of sarees on the occasion of Tandon's birthday as part of Vajpayee's election campaign for the 2004 Lok Sabha polls. Tandon was removed as Vajpayee's agent following the tragedy.

A case was filed against him in a local court but he was exonerated of all charges.

Tandon, who spent around five decades with Vajpayee, got inducted in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at a young age and rose through the ranks to become ward councillor, two times MLC and thrice an MLA. He was a cabinet minister in Uttar Pradesh between 1991-92 and again in 1997.

He also got elected to the Lok Sabha twice, the last being in 2009 from Lucknow.

In BJP, he is remembered as a person who wields influence across party lines and has the capability to forge alliances with opponents too. In fact, he was the architect of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and BJP alliance in 1997 and went on to become the urban development minister in the Mayawati government.

BSP chief Mayawati considers Tandon a rakhi brother.

Another veteran Bihar politician has found his way to a Raj Bhavan. Eight-time Rajgir MLA Satyadeo Narain Arya has been appointed governor of Haryana.

Arya, a 73-year old Dalit leader, is considered a hardliner old guard of the RSS and his new responsibility is being seen as an effort by the Centre to appease the Sangh, as well as address the fears of the Scheduled Castes in Bihar and elsewhere amid rising violence against them.

Governor of Meghalaya Ganga Prasad, another old guard from the RSS who too hails from Bihar, has been transferred to Sikkim.