Senior scholar and former Union Minister Arif Mohammed Khan was appointed as the Governor of Kerala in September and has since then grown increasingly unpopular with the Communist-Congress political establishment as well as entrenched leftists.

Khan, who had famously resigned from the Rajiv Gandhi government following its pro-Islamist stance on the Shah Bano case, has over the years taken various politically incorrect positions on the issue of Muslims and political Islam.

Khan has been a known critic of Islamic fundamentalism spearheaded by various clerics in the country and has been a staunch advocate for reforms within the Muslim community, especially women’s rights. He was one of the biggest supporters of Modi government’s law criminalising Triple Talaq.

Thus, after being appointed as the Kerala Governor by the Narendra Modi led central government, it was widely expected that he would be unpopular with the leftist establishment and has not disappointed on that front.

Just today (2 January) Khan dismissed the Kerala assembly resolution demanding immediate withdrawal of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) by stating that, “Citizenship Act is purely a Central subject and moreover, in Kerala there is no issue of any illegal migrants. Hence, this resolution passed by the Assembly has no Constitutional or legal validity”. He also added that as a result this resolution means nothing.

Incidentally, just a few days ago controversial historian Irfan Habib suffered a meltdown when Khan was addressing the inaugural meet of Indian History Congress.

As reported, initially Habib had raised a few questions over CAA and when Khan began patiently replying, the former and a few of his supporters began shouting down the Kerala Governor for quoting Maulana Azad.

Things boiled over when Habib tried to physically manhandle him as a section of the audience tried to heckle him from below the stage. Khan though refused to be bullied and asserted that they cannot shout him down.

Khan had earlier openly supported CAA by quoting the promise made by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to provide citizenship to minorities of Pakistan. He had added that the act fulfils the promise made by the then Congress party leaders to the non-Muslims who had been left in Pakistan post partition.

This had resulted in a sharp protest by Kerala Congress leaders who had accused him of being a “spokesperson of the BJP”. This also resulted in his invitation for commemorating former Kerala chief minister K Karunakaran’s death anniversary, being rescinded at the last moment.

Leaders of the communist state government too were unhappy with Khan over his pro-CAA stance and “advised him not to make political statements”.

Khan had also taken on malpractices in Kerala’s education sector and his office had slammed the state education minister K T Jaleel for violating norms and exceeded his jurisdiction while probing the alleged irregularities in B-Tech mark sheet evaluation of APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University.