His Excellency Shri Balmiki Prasad Singh
Governor of Sikkim
Shri Balmiki Prasad Singh is a distinguished scholar, thinker and
public servant. H.E. the Governor was born on 1.1.1942 in Bihar. He was
educated in a village school and subsequently at the universities of
Patna and Oxford. He passed his M.A. in Political Science from Patna
University, Patna, standing first in first class with record marks and
several gold medals. He became a lecturer in Political Science in Patna
University at the age of nineteen.
Shri B.P. Singh was appointed in 1964 to the Indian Administrative
Service (IAS). He has since been the recipient of several awards and
fellowships, including the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship (1982-84) and
Queen Elizabeth Fellowship (1989-90). He is also recipient of Gulzari
lal Nanda Award for Outstanding public service from the President of
India in 1998 and Man of Letters Award from His Holiness the Dalai Lama
in 2003.
Over the past four decades Shri B.P. Singh has held a variety of
important positions within Assam as well as in the Government of India.
He was Additional Secretary, Ministry of Environment & Forest
(1993-95), Culture Secretary (1995-97) and Home Secretary (1997-99) in
Government of India.
As an international civil servant, Shri B.P. Singh served as Executive
Director and Ambassador at the World Bank during 1999-2002 representing
India, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Shri B.P. Singh has also been Chancellor of the Central Institute of
Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarnath (a Deemed to be University) and Chief
Editor of the South Asia Series on “Perspectives on Economics,
Technology and Governance” of Oxford University Press, New York. Until
recently he was Mahatma Gandhi National Fellow at New Delhi. He is
currently Governor of Sikkim.
Shri B.P. Singh has authored five books including The Problem of Change
- A Study of North-East India (1987); India’s Culture: The State, the
Arts and Beyond (1998) and Bahudha and the post-9/11 World (2008), all
published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi. In addition he has
authored several articles and monographs on politics, culture, ecology
and public administration. He is also Chief Editor of the The
Millennium Book on New Delhi, OUP (2001).
Shri B.P Singh is married to Smt. Karuna Singh and they live in Raj Bhavan, Gangtok, Sikkim.
