Eight new faces in West Bengal Cabinet reshuffle

 Kolkata

 In a major reshuffle of the West Bengal Council of Ministers on Wednesday, eight new MLAs were inducted as ministers in the government headed by Mamata Banerjee. Five new cabinet ministers including Babul Surpiyo were sworn in at Raj Bhawan. The new ministers also included three Ministers of State. The cabinet reshuffle was necessitated after Partha Chatterjee’s arrest and the State government relieving him from the ministerial responsibilities.

 Five Cabinet Ministers were sworn in today. Mr. Supriyo, a former Union Minister quit the Bharatiya Janata Party in September 2021 after being dropped from the Union Council of Ministers. He was elected from Ballygunge assembly seat on TMC ticket in April 2022. The four other Cabinet Ministers sworn in today are Snehasish Chakraborty, Partha Bhowmick, Udayan Guha and Pradip Majumdar.

 Three new Ministers of State are Tajmul Hussain, Satyajit Barman and Biplab Roychowdhury. Birbaha Hansda who was Minister of State has been elevated to Minister of State (Independent charge). The Ministers were sworn in by Governor La Ganesan. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was present at the occasion. Ms. Banerjee has tried to include every community and region in the reshuffle. Udayan Guha is an MLA from Dinhata in north Bengal, while Tajmul Hussain MLA from Malda represents minority community.

The cabinet reshuffle also highlights the party’s emphasis on one person one post, a formula proposed by Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. MLAs like Partha Bhowmick and Snehasish Chrakraborty were relieved of their party responsibilities before being inducted in the Cabinet. Other than the developments centering Partha Chatterjee, the cabinet led by Mamata Banerjee had lost two senior members Subrata Mukherjee and Sadhan Pande who died after the 2021 Assembly polls. Subrata Mukherjee who was in charge of State’s Panchayat Department passed in November 2021 and Sadhan Pande who held Consumer Affairs Department died in February 22. Partha Chatterjee held four key ministries before July 28, when he was stripped off from his ministerial responsibilities following the arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in the School Service Commission recruitment scam.