Former diplomat Taranjit Singh Sandhu was appointed the lieutenant governor of Delhi on Thursday, replacing V K Saxena, who has been made the Ladakh L-G. He had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections from Amritsar in 2024 on a BJP ticket. Sandhu, a 1988-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, was one of the most experienced Indian diplomats on United States affairs. He served in the Indian Mission in Washington DC multiple times. He was India's ambassador to the United States from February 2020 to January 2024. Previously, he served as the deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Washington from July 2013 to January 2017 and as the first secretary (political) from 1997 to 2000, with the responsibility to liaise with the US Congress. The 63-year-old career diplomat had also been at the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations from July 2005 to February 2009. Sandhu's predecessor V K Saxena has been Delhi's lieutenant governor for around four years. During the perio