New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday (August 3, 2022) expanded her cabinet and inducted nine new faces including former BJP MP Babul Supriyo. The cabinet reshuffle, the first since the Trinamool Congress (TMC) returned to power for the third consecutive term in 2021, saw Supriyo, Snehasis Chakraborty, Partha Bhowmik, Udayan Guha, and Pradip Majumdar taking oath as cabinet ministers at Raj Bhavan by Governor La Ganesan. Birbaha Hansda, a tribal leader, and Biplab Roy Chowdhury took oath as ministers of state with independent charge. Tajmul Hossain and Satyajit Barman were sworn in as ministers of state.
Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet reshuffle comes amid the party facing the heat over the arrest of senior minister Partha Chatterjee by the ED in the school jobs scam.
Earlier on Monday, Banerjee had carried out a major overhaul in her party and announced that a cabinet reshuffle will take place on Wednesday.
Babul Supriyo among new ministers in Mamata Banerjee cabinet
Babul Supriyo, who took oath as a West Bengal minister, is a former Union minister and BJP MP who quit the saffron party and joined the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC after being dropped from the Union cabinet last year. He is presently a TMC MLA from the Ballygunge assembly constituency in Kolkata.
Snehasis Chakraborty and Partha Bhowmik are considered close to TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee in the party circles. They were on Monday relieved of their organizational responsibilities in North 24 Parganas and Hooghly districts respectively.
Udayan Guha is a former Forward Bloc leader who joined TMC after the 2016 assembly polls. He was one of the frontrunners for induction into the cabinet from north Bengal. Son of former Left Front minister Kamal Guha, Udayan is currently one of the tallest TMC leaders in the Cooch Behar district.
(This is a developing story)