New Delhi, Sept. 30: The government today brought a couple of new faces into the Raj Bhavan circuit to offload the additional charge assigned to some governors. The new faces are a mix of military veterans, including former navy chief D.K. Joshi, and members of the BJP.

The changes were announced by Rashtrapati Bhavan this morning.

Three Raj Bhavans in the Northeast will have new governors with the government deciding to shift Banwarilal Purohit, governor of both Assam and Meghalaya, to Tamil Nadu; giving the key southern state a full-time governor after a year-long interim arrangement.

The seasoned Maharashtra politician from the Vidarbha region, who has shifted back and forth between the Congress and the BJP, has been moved to Tamil Nadu at a time when the politics of the state is going through a major flux and the governor's office will be in the thick of it.

Maharashtra Governor C. Vidyasagar Rao, a BJP veteran, had been holding additional charge of the Tamil Nadu Raj Bhavan since September 2, 2016. His stint has been an eventful one after the death of then Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa and the split in the AIADMK that is still to be resolved. Rao will continue in the Maharashtra Raj Bhavan.

Purohit will be replaced in Assam by BJP veteran and a former minister in Delhi, Jagdish Mukhi. He is being shifted to Assam from Andaman and Nicobar Islands where he was lieutenant governor since August 22, 2016.

D.K. Joshi, who resigned as naval chief in 2014 following a fire in a submarine, will be the new lieutenant governor of Andaman and Nicobar.

In Meghalaya, Purohit will be replaced by Ganga Prasad, who has been the BJP leader in the Bihar legislative council.

In Arunachal Pradesh, Brigadier B.D. Mishra, who has seen action in various theatres of war, will replace P.B. Acharya. Acharya, the governor of Nagaland, had been holding additional charge at Itanagar since January.

All northeastern states now have full-time governors. Arunachal and Meghalaya were without full-time governors after the recall of J.P. Rajkhowa as Arunachal governor in September 2016 and the resignation of V. Shanmuganathan as governor of Meghalaya in January this year.

Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura are scheduled to go to the polls around February-March next year while Mizoram will vote in the second half of 2018.

The other new face will be that of Satya Pal Malik who began his political career in the Janata parivar. He will be the governor of Bihar, replacing Keshri Nath Tripathi, who had been given additional charge of the Raj Bhavan in Patna after the BJP picked Ram Nath Kovind as its presidential candidate.