KK Sharma will assist Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory’s Lieutenant Governor GC Murmu as one of his advisors.

The Home Ministry on Thursday appointed former bureaucrat Sharma and a retired IPS officer Farooq Khan as advisors to the Lt Governor of the newly created UT. Both of them were among the five advisors of Satya Pal Malik who was the last Governor of Jammu and Kashmir before the state was split into two UTs.

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Murmu, who is considered a trusted officer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is a 1985 batch IAS of Gujarat cadre whereas Sharma retired as 1983 batch IAS of the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre of IAS and was two batches senior to Murmu.

Khan is a 1994 batch IPS officer and has a wide experience of fighting terrorism in J&K. An order issued by the home ministry said that Sharma and Khan will function as advisors to Murmu.

Besides the two, J&K had three other advisors during the tenure of Malik. Vijay Kumar, Khurshid Ahmad Ganai, and K Skandan have not been retained as advisors in the UT. Radha Krishna Mathur, a 1977 batch IAS of the Tripura cadre, has taken over as the first Lt Governor of the mountainous UT of Ladakh.

A 1988 batch IAS and a top bureaucrat of J&K, Umang Narula has already been appointed as the lone advisor of Ladakh’s Lt Governor Mathur.